Mining

QMines reports strong copper-gold-silver results at Mt Chalmers

Go to Robin Bromby author's page
By Robin Bromby - 
QMines ASX QML Helicopter EM survey Mt Chalmers copper

QMines expects the survey will be finished in early February and provide quality data to guide future exploration.

Copied

The first three reverse circulation holes drilled by QMines (ASX: QML) at its Mt Chalmers project in Queensland have delivered what the company describes as “excellent” copper, gold and silver results.

The company has completed 12 reverse circulation holes (for 2,162m), of which assays from three have been received. 

These assays comprised 21m at 2.6% copper equivalent (including 8m at 4.7% copper equivalent), 29m at 1.6% copper equivalent (including 2m at 4.2%) and 16m at 1.1% copper equivalent. 

Mt Chalmers was mined sporadically between 1898 and 1982 and, in total, produced 1.2Mt at 2% copper, 3.6 grams per tonne gold and 19g/t silver.

When QMines picked up the project in 2020 ahead of an initial public offering, Mt Chalmers had an inferred resource of 39Mt at 1.15% copper, 0.81g/t gold and 8.4g/t silver, for a contained 44,900t of copper, 101,900oz of gold and 1.06Moz of silver.

QMines says at that time the project had significant sunk capital including a large historic drill database that provides further resource growth potential. That database covers 381 holes for a total of 15,818m of drilling.

Drilling delivers shallow, thick intercepts

A further 150 holes had then been recently discovered.

Mt Chalmers is located 17km northeast of Rockhamption.

Executive chairman Andrew Sparke said Mt Chalmers is continuing to deliver shallow, thick and high-grade drilling results.

“Further step-out drilling is continuing at Mt Chalmers where the deposit remains open in a number of directions,” he said.

The company began reverse circulation drilling at the project in April.

These represent the first stage of a planned 10,000m reverse circulation program.

Mineralisation wider than expected

QMines says the RC drilling to date has already identified wider mineralisation intercepts than expected and the assays provide some evidence of stacked mineralised zones.

The current program has 50 holes scheduled.

QMines, headquartered in the Sydney suburb of Mosman, is targeting copper and gold in Queensland.

It owns what it describes as four advanced projects covering a total of 1.096sq km.