New gold-silver assays highlight emerging opportunities at Stavely Minerals’ namesake project
Stavely executive chair and managing director Chris Cairns says the S41 prospect is emerging as a “very exciting” discovery opportunity.
New gold and silver hits from aircore drilling at the Stavely copper-gold project in western Victoria have highlighted emerging regional discovery opportunities for Stavely Minerals (ASX: SVY).
Intercepts of up to 2 metres at 3.92 grams per tonne gold at the S41 prospect and up to 20m at 33.2g/t silver at the Northern Flexure prospect follow an extensive review of regional and near-resource targets last year.
Significant assays with elevated base metals and pathfinder elements were 4m at 2.21g/t gold, 6.9g/t silver, 0.10% lead and 0.18% zinc from 96m, including 2m at 3.92g/t gold, 9.3g/t silver, 0.18% lead and 0.31% zinc from 98m; and 2m at 0.47g/t gold and 3.1g/t silver from 140m to end-of-hole.
Other results were 2m at 0.11g/t gold, 0.12% copper and 10.1g/t silver from 80m; 10m at 0.42% zinc, 0.16% lead and 2.4g/t silver from 58m; and 6m at 0.20g/t gold, 0.18% copper and 2.2g/t silver from 100m.
Hydrothermal system
Stavely said the results had defined a hydrothermal alteration system approximately 2 kilometres long in a northwest orientation with widespread sericite-silica-pyrite alteration and associated gold, silver, lead, zinc, arsenic and antimony-copper-molybdenum geochemical anomalism.
It said the S41 prospect in particular, appears to host a large phyllic alteration system, possibly associated with a deeper porphyry, which has been overprinted by a high-level epithermal gold-silver-base metal-carbonate system.
‘Very exciting’ opportunity
Managing director Chris Cairns said the prospect was emerging as a “very exciting” opportunity.
“What impresses us at this point is the scale of the system based upon what is still very wide-spaced aircore drilling,” he said.
“The prospect lies beneath 80m of much younger basalt cover we are the first to be able to test these targets that previous explorers did not have the ability to define or drill test.”
More powerful rig technology means the company can drill through the younger basalt cover which others have previously failed to penetrate.
“These factors create a new ‘search space’ where we are the first to evaluate new discovery opportunities – and it is often early in the evaluation of a new ‘search space’ that the largest discoveries are made, simply because they have the largest footprints,” Mr Cairns said.
“That is why our regional exploration is so exciting to us and we see S41 and other emerging prospects like the Northern Flexure as the type of large-scale discovery opportunities we are seeking.”