As Alma Metals (ASX:ALM) works towards a resource upgrade at its Briggs Copper Project in Queensland, the junior explorer has a busy run into the end of 2024.
Earlier this week, the company released initial assays from the latest drilling campaign which strengthened its strategy to define a higher overall resource grade for Briggs.
Alma is undertaking a 2,000m drilling program to convert more of the 415-million-tonne inferred resource into the higher confidence indicated category.
Managing Director Frazer Tabeart tells Mining.com.au the program will run through to October to pave the way for release of an upgraded resource in the first quarter of next year.
This will also set the stage for the possible completion of a Scoping Study, for release by the end of the first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2025.
“That’s assuming that we get enough of the resource upgraded to warrant going to that stage and getting that work kicked off in the next month or so,” Tabeart explains.
“We’ve already started components of it, but we’re sort of holding off on doing the mining side of it until we know we’ve got enough of a resource and if we haven’t, then we’ll have to keep drilling until we have.”
The Briggs Copper Project currently hosts an inferred resource of 415 million tonnes at 0.25% copper and 31 parts per million molybdenum, containing 1 million tonnes of copper and over 28.6 million pounds of molybdenum.
Alma is hoping to upgrade both the copper and molybdenum, so the company is also planning to undertake metallurgical testwork to determine the potential recoveries of the molybdenum.
This week’s results show “significantly higher” copper grades are present within the Briggs resource, according to Tabeart, who said earlier this week the wide zone of high-grade mineralisation starting at surface will be a focus for follow-up drilling.
Samples from the current drilling campaign will provide material for the planned metallurgical testwork.
Alma has also appointed a metallurgical consultant.
“We’re just finalising the definition of the geomet domains and then we’ll put a sampling strategy together on that for two master composites and then get that work underway,” he tells this news service.
“That’ll probably kick off some time in late September, early October and that’ll go through to the end of the year.
“So again by early next year we should have some good preliminary met data coming out and it’ll be quite extensive.”
Tabeart adds that the explorer has started work on various environmental aspects of the proposed Scoping Study.
“That’s almost done actually, which is predominantly a desktop evaluation of fatal flaws but also development of a detailed permitting pathway and timeframe,” he says.
“So that’s the sort of scope we gave the environmental consultants and we’re expecting their preliminary report this week.”
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Alma Metals
