Pivotal Metals (ASX:PVT) has started spinning 2 drill rigs at its Horden Lake Project in Quebec, Canada, to test the mineralisation of a suite of elements in the area.
The company plans to drill 35 holes for roughly 8,000m over the next two months to collect gold, silver, platinum, and cobalt by-product assay data for parts of the Horden Lake deposit that have not been assayed for these metals before.
By doing so, the company hopes to exploit potential increases in payable grades from the project.
According to Pivotal, only the central part of the deposit has full multi-element assay data, meaning the data from the new drilling program could help with future mineral resource estimate updates.
Further, the drilling is designed to exploit the tonnage upside potential by testing areas of limited density or open areas immediately adjacent to the 27.8-million-tonne resource envelope.
Pivotal’s new drilling program will also help the company collect samples for metallurgical and flowsheet optimisation testwork.
Pivotal Metals Managing Director Ivan Fairhall says the start of this fresh drilling program is a ‘milestone’ for the company and the project.
“It’s the first time the project has been drilled in over a decade whilst it lay dormant in private ownership.
This program should deliver on our strategy to add value to the already significant resource and also de-risk it in support of establishing the project as having genuine development potential.”
“This program should deliver on our strategy to add value to the already significant resource and also de-risk it in support of establishing the project as having genuine development potential”
In parallel with the drilling, Pivotal plans to complete downhole electromagnetic (EM) geophysical survey work in the area using historical and newly drilled holes.
The company says this type of EM work has never been conducted at the Horden Lake deposit, which is mostly unconstrained at depth by drilling.
Pivotal also plans to fly a drone-based magnetic survey of the entire property to help plan exploration for potential extensions to or repeats of the deposit.
Meanwhile, Pivotal is awaiting results from a geophysics survey at its Belleterre-Angliers Greenstone Belt (BAGB) project, also in Canada.
Write to Joshua Smith at Mining.com.au
Images: Pivotal Metals
