Stavely Minerals delivers resource updates at Victorian copper-gold projects
The Stavely copper-gold project covers 115km of strike in western Victoria.
Junior explorer Stavely Minerals (ASX: SVY) has marked the June quarter with a maiden mineral resource estimate at the Cayley Lode within its Stavely copper-gold project in western Victoria, and revised estimates for the nearby Thursdays Gossan and Carroll’s deposits.
The Cayley Lode estimate sits at 9.3 million tonnes grading 1.23% copper, 0.23 grams per tonne gold and 7.1g/t silver and marks the culmination of an 18-month resource drill-out of the discovery and additional parallel lodes.
Approximately 73% of the contained copper is constrained in an open pit optimisation in the indicated category while all of the underground resource is inferred.
Starting point
Stavely considered the estimate a “starting point” for the project, and said there exists “enormous potential” to extend the mineralisation at depth below the initial open pit.
Revised estimates for the chalcocite-enriched blanket at the Thursday’s Gossan and the Carroll’s copper-gold-silver-zinc deposit have resulted in a combined resource of 28.3Mt at 0.75% copper, 0.11g/t gold and 3.5g/t silver.
Carroll’s is considered a satellite development to the larger Cayley Lode, located 35 kilometres away.
Exploration target
Stavely has estimated an exploration target of between 1.5Mt and 2Mt based upon extending the Cayley Lode copper-gold-silver mineralisation along strike and down-dip of the underground inferred resource.
This target is considered reasonable given that the mineralisation remains open at depth and along strike.
Black Range assays
At the end of the quarter, Stavely had received all outstanding assays for its regional auger soil sampling and aircore drilling programs at the Black Range project, which Stavely holds in joint venture with Navarre Minerals (ASX: NML).
The results are being spatially assessed and will be subject to target ranking and planning of follow-up exploration programs.
Weak intercepts
A diamond hole drilled at the Toora West target within the Yarram Park project returned weakly-mineralised intercepts including 1m at 0.41% copper and 2.8g/t silver from 39m; 1m at 0.19% copper from 393m; and 16m at 0.10% copper from 581m.
While past exploration has been successful in identifying porphyry-style copper-molybdenum-gold mineralisation beneath 40m of transported cover, Stavely’s geologists decided the intensity of the veining and alteration encountered was insufficient to warrant further exploration.
Exploration costs
Stavely’s exploration and evaluation costs totalled $2.75 million for the June quarter.
Payments to related parties and associates amounted to $217,000 and included executive director salaries, non-executive director fees and superannuation.
The company had $900,000 cash on hand at the end of June.
Subsequent to the quarter, Stavely launched a $5.5 million capital raising comprised of a $4 million institutional placement at $0.15 per share and a share purchase plan for a further $1.5 million.