Sunstone Metals ready to start drilling at Limon epithermal gold-silver discovery

Sunstone Metals (ASX: STM) is looking to establish a substantial near-surface resource from drilling at the Limon epithermal gold-silver discovery within the Bramaderos porphyry gold-copper-silver project in southern Ecuador.

The diamond drilling campaign will target areas where extensive trenching in February returned grades of up to 16 grams per tonne gold and 376g/t silver from shallow mineralisation.

It aims to build on the potential for an early development opportunity and will initially focus on the Central Shoot and nearby Western target.

Trenching assays

Sunstone said its confidence has been strengthened by the latest trenching assays, which expand the area of mineralisation at Western’s Target 1 and emerging Target 2.

Target 2 is notable for its very high silver values and is along a structural trend 400 metres from Target 1.

The Limon discovery hosts an epithermal gold-silver exploration target of between 900,000 tonnes and 1.7 million ounces of gold equivalent (AuEq) within 30 million tonnes to 44Mt at a grade of up to 1.2g/t AuEq.

Cash flow opportunity

Managing director Patrick Duffy said the pivotal campaign could underpin an early development and cash flow opportunity.

“The outlook for drilling is exceptionally strong, given that we will be targeting areas of known mineralisation,” he said.

“Our previous work at Limon has been very exciting and we are aiming to deliver similar results across the multiple targets.”

“We believe there is immense potential to create rapid and substantial value for shareholders at this discovery, particularly given its grade and shallow nature.”

Bramaderos development

Mr Duffy said exploration at Limon was part of a longer-term strategy that would subsequently develop the much larger gold-copper-silver porphyry systems at Bramaderos.

The project currently hosts a resource estimate of 2.7Moz AuEq at the Brama-Alba prospect and a porphyry gold-copper-silver exploration target of between 3.3Moz and 8.6Moz AuEq within 255Mt to 360Mt at a grade of up to 0.74g/t AuEq.

Initial assays from the first few holes drilled at Western Target 1 are expected to be available in late July.