Pivotal Metals (ASX:PVT) has increased the resource estimate for the Horden Lake Project in Québec, Canada, supporting the company’s vision of advancing a “long-life open pit asset with a meaningful copper production profile”.
The project’s resource now totals 37 million tonnes @ 1.1% copper equivalent for 407,000 tonnes of contained copper-equivalent metal.
This latest resource upgrade is a result of infill and step-out drilling, as well as improved resource modelling over previous estimates.
Pivotal says the resource shows a large increase in Horden Lake’s size and, of particular importance, growth in pit-constrained resources shows strong potential for a substantial open-pit development scenario.
Managing Director Ivan Fairhall says this update highlights that Horden Lake is a “leading” shallow and high-grade copper project on the ASX.
“We now have well over 300,000 tonnes copper equivalent at more than 1% copper equivalent in a pit shell — a level considered a key scale and quality threshold,” Fairhall says.
“Importantly, the contribution of byproducts is supported by recent testwork and we now have a highly robust and defendable picture emerging of the metal production potential of the deposit.
“We are waiting on assays from drilling the first of many electromagnetic targets outside the deposit envelope, and we are excited to see Horden Lake continue to grow and advance — cementing its place as one of a few credible mine development opportunities in an increasingly tight copper mine-supply pipeline.”
Pivotal is continuing to broaden its search area associated with the Horden Lake deposit, focusing along the 3,200m contact zone. In conjunction, the company will investigate the western parallel trend with the main claim block and the southern Horden Lake Project claim block.
Further, the company will begin engineering studies to develop its understanding of future development scenarios. This information will be used to guide exploration priorities and to map a pathway to economic evaluations of Horden Lake.
Pivotal will also continue to advance metallurgical optimisation opportunities identified in recent testwork.
Horden Lake is an advanced stage, copper-dominant project considered prospective for copper, nickel, gold, platinum group metals and cobalt. The project is located 131km north-northwest of Matagami in Québec, Canada.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Pivotal Metals
