Pivotal Metals’ (ASX:PVT) recent assay results of two further diamond drillholes at its 100% owned Horden Lake Project in Québec, Canada have “exceeded expectations”.
Commenting to Mining.com.au, Managing Director Ivan Fairhall says the down plunge extensions are reframing the company’s understanding of the serious upside potential of the project.
“Clearly there is a lot more to find,” Fairhall says.
“We believe our existing resource of 28 million tonnes at 1.5% copper equivalent, starting at surface is a phenomenally valuable asset,” the MD says.
“For an asset that has had 55km drilling, to be hitting such wide zones of solid copper equivalent grades, along strike but less than half the depth that drilling extends resources elsewhere, tells us that there is a lot of unfinished business here.
“Don’t forget we have over 2km of strike, it’s all open.”
Fairhall tells this news service Pivotal is confident there is more to find, adding that stepping out down dip from 32m at 1.2% CuEq “is a bit of a no-brainer” and low risk way of adding significant metal tonnage.
“We can also see more and more how limited the focus of previous exploration phases has been, and so our views on property wide exploration upside are increasingly bullish. You’re going to hear a lot more about that part of things soon,” the MD explains.
When asked what’s in store for the Horden Lake Project heading into H2 2024, Fairhall says the pipeline of work is “chocka block”, noting to date Pivotal has only released results from nine of 34 holes.
“So, there are 25 more holes to come, many of them step-out, and many including that really exciting downhole geophysics that tells us where to focus our attention moving forward. We are starting our met test program shortly, and we will have a resource update out too. And then drilling again by year end. It’s flat out,” Fairhall adds.
Horden Lake is a copper-dominant Cu-Ni-Au-PGM-Co Project located 131km north-northwest of Matagami, in Québec. The project hosts an indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate of 28Mt @ 1.5% CuEq, as a result of more than 52,464m of drilling already completed on the property.
The objectives of the recent drilling program were to infill missing byproduct multi-element assay information, target resource expansion potential which remains open at depth across its full extent and collect a distribution of metallurgical sample for a complete testwork program.
Downhole EM surveys have also been completed to dimension future exploration potential and targeting.
Fairhall notes down plunge extensions are a key pillar of the significant upside story at Horden Lake. The southern flank of the deposit has only been drilled to about 200m, whereas mineralisation is defined to some 550m in the central portion.
These high-grade results in the south demonstrate the strong potential for resource growth at depth, with the deposit remaining completely open across its full strike extent. As such, , the MD anticipates increasing the metal content of the resource through inclusion of the significant palladium, gold, cobalt, platinum, and silver assays Pivotal is seeing which were never before assayed for in this portion of the deposit.
The Horden Lake deposit was discovered in the 1960s. In 2013, the project was forfeited as security for a delinquent loan and sat dormant in private ownership prior to Pivotal’s 100% acquisition in late-2022.
In 2022, Pivotal completed a comprehensive evaluation of all historical data, and calculated an updated inferred and indicated MRE totalling 27.8Mt @ 1.49% CuEq.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Pivotal
