Sunshine Metals hits wide zones of high-grade gold at Liontown
Sunshine Metals (ASX: SHN) has confirmed a potential gold-rich feeder zone with the drilling of multiple high-grade gold intersections at the Liontown prospect within its Ravenswood Consolidated project in North Queensland.
Assays received from the initial 12 reverse circulation (RC) hole zones at Liontown are considered to have intersected gold and copper rich feeder zones overlying the historic project.
Highlight hits include 17m at 22.1 grams per tonne gold.
New geological model
Sunshine undertook the Liontown drilling as part of its development of a new geological model that has identified this feeder zone over the 2.3 million tonnes of zinc, gold, copper, lead and silver volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) resource.
Sunshine managing director Dr Damien Keys said the exceptional gold results will be included in the resource update due in December 2023.
“The stunning intercepts at Liontown are a great reward for the solid geological work completed by the team,” Dr Keys said.
“The decision was made to target the gold-copper rich footwall and feeder zones to the Liontown resource with a high impact, shallow RC program. The feeder zones have not been recognised by past explorers and are often difficult to target.”
“We have also completed a shallow diamond hole into the feeder target, approximately 30m west of the intercept in 23LTRC002. The diamond hole will yield critical structural orientation data, which will be used to target the feeder to the north of the current Liontown resource.”
Encouraging signs
Dr Keys said the identification of the likely feeder zone at Liontown has boosted the company’s confidence in its novel approach.
“It also suggests that there are possibly two further feeder zones that are poorly drill tested. One coincides with the historic Carrington gold workings and the second is potentially located in the under-drilled Gap zone between Liontown and Liontown East.”
“The find presents a new opportunity to rapidly grow the gold and copper inventories at the Liontown resource and validates a means of hunting these feeder zones at other VMS prospects nearby including Waterloo and Orient.”
Rich mining history
Mining ceased at the historic Liontown site in 1911 and was later re-opened in 1936 as a silver-lead mine. Between 1936 and 1961, Liontown produced some 3,000 ounces of gold, 54,000oz of silver, and 520t of lead.
Sunshine believes the historic mining of gold-copper lodes, together with high-grade results including 5m at 13.56g/t gold and 8m at 4.24g/t gold, highlight the potential to uncover gold mineralisation not associated with base metals in massive sulphides.
Dr Keys says that, while gold has not previously been a prime focus of exploration at Liontown, Sunshine sees it as an opportunity to bring new ideas and modern exploration techniques to define targets and to explore specifically for gold mineralisation.
Three feeder zones
This has led to the new geological model already identifying the three potential feeder zones: the main feeder to the resource; a potential feeder to the historic Carrington mine main shaft; and another potential feeder to the under drilled Gap zone.
Sunshine is now waiting for the return of assays from completed footwall-style mineralisation drilling. These are expected to be available in early December 2023 and will be studied to further assess the copper and gold potential of the footwall.
The company is also preparing to recommence shallow RC drilling in early December to assess the extent to which feeder mineralisation persists into the volcanic basement.