Freehill Mining expedites exploration at El Dorado magnetite-copper-gold project
Freehill Mining’s exploration at El Dorado is targeting areas where rock chips assay up to 45% iron, 4.85% copper and 22.8g/t gold.
As it firms up its flagship Yerbas Buenas high-grade magnetite project in Chile, Freehill Mining (ASX: FHS) has kicked off a geophysics survey across its soon to be acquired El Dorado project.
The geophysics survey has been designed to identify magnetite structures across the 750-hectare tenements, which are directly adjacent to Yerbas Buenas.
Once this has been completed and evaluated, Freehill will undertake an induced polarisation survey in an attempt to uncover potential copper sulphide structures.
“Fresh off the back of significantly increasing our magnetite resource to 67Mt at Yerbas Buenas, we have now commenced our planned preliminary schedule of works at the adjoining and highly prospective El Dorado tenements,” Freehill chief executive officer Peter Hinner said.
“Initial indications from previous sampling and other reconnaissance work has reaffirmed our belief that El Dorado has the potential to add considerable grade and scale to our existing footprint at Yerbas Buenas, whilst also providing exposure to the copper-gold mineralisation on offer within Chile’s world-class iron-oxide-copper-gold belt.”
“Momentum is continuing to build across the business, and this early works program at El Dorado will help our team to identify the priority targets for initial drilling once the acquisition is formalised,” Mr Hinner added.
Locking-in Eldorado
Freehill noted the completion of its acquisition of Eldorado is subject to shareholder approval at an annual general meeting early next week.
However, the company said it was “extremely confident” of the approval being granted and in the interest of expediting the new project has begun preliminary exploration at a “modest cost”.
Previous rock chip reconnaissance sampling across the project recovered gold, copper and magnetite.
Peak grades were 45% iron, 4.85% copper and 22.8 grams per tonne gold.
As part of its preliminary work at the project, Freehill has completed additional surface sampling across the southern, mid and north-eastern sections of the tenements.
This program focused on various geological structures identified by the previous sampling program.
These samples have been sent for analysis with results anticipated around the same time as the geophysics survey.