Freehill Mining discovers ‘huge’ potential copper structure at El Dorado from IP survey

Freehill Mining (ASX: FHS) has discovered a “huge” potential copper structure across its El Dorado project after completing an induced polarisation survey.

The survey identified the high intensity core of anomaly covers 1km by 500m across the 750 hectare project.

According to Freehill, the potential copper structure is 10-times larger than the one found at its adjacent Yerbas Buenas project.

The one at Yerbas Buenas was diamond drilled and hit “significant” copper sulphide mineralisation over 144m from surface.

Freehill chief executive officer Peter Hinner said it was a “fantastic development” for the company and “potentially confirms El Dorado hosts a huge copper structure”.

“The high intensity core itself covers an area over 1km long and 500m wide and its surrounded by a mineralised halo twice the size so there is significant exploration potential across this broader area,” Mr Hinner explained.

“Our technical team could not be more excited by this IP survey and we are now actively planning a drill program to more comprehensively explore this very exciting and large target.”

Yerbas Buenas exploratory hole

Mr Hinner said he hoped to uncover similar mineralisation at El Dorado to that unearthed at Yerbas Buenas.

At the Yerbas Buenas anomaly, Freehill had drilled a single 400m exploratory diamond hole. It was undertaken in the north eastern extremity of the Yerbas Buenas project.

Within that hole were several intersections with “highly encouraging” copper sulphide mineralisation within the first 144m from collar.

There was an average copper grade of 0.2% across 18 intervals with up to 0.324% copper identified.

More copper, gold targets to be tested

As well as the IP survey, surface mapping and sampling have revealed at least two more large “high potential” copper and gold targets to be tested.

This program returned up to 2.5% copper and 6.86 grams per tonne gold across three “highly prospective” targets.

Freehill noted this latest IP survey had only been carried out over one of the three targets, with a further 2.8km of the El Dorado project area to the north remaining untested.