Sunshine Metals (ASX:SHN) anticipates upgrading the Liontown deposit’s mineral resource estimate after receiving the final assays from the latest diamond drilling program.
The $17.46 million market capitalisation company expects to upgrade Liontown’s MRE in early December 2024.
The Gap Zone, part of the Ravenswood Consolidated Project in Queensland, represents an area between the Liontown and Liontown East resources, which contains 2.94 million tonnes at 10.55% zinc-equivalent and 1.47Mt at 10.96% zinc-equivalent, respectively.
Managing Director Damien Keys says Sunshine has processed and assayed 77 holes for 14,764m of drilling, which delineated a “high-grade” gold panel within a broader under-drilled footwall zone, improved gold-copper metallurgical recoveries and now identified the new resource target growth area.
“This is a huge volume of successful work in a short timeframe,” Keys says.
“The Gap Zone diamond drilling has provided 20 significant intercepts in an area 160m long by 200m deep, between the Liontown and Liontown East resources.”
Sunshine Metals notes one of the opportunities at Liontown is a historical versatile time domain electromagnetic anomaly which is situated off the western end of the current resource.
A small, ground-based fixed loop electromagnetic survey has been completed, with the aim to confirm the position and magnitude of the anomaly. As a result, a modern conductor was uncovered 100m west of the current resource at 50m depth.
The company says it is well advanced on applying a ratio of copper to zinc to map out “hot zones”, interpreted to most likely host copper-gold rich mineralisation for drill targeting.
Two key zones have been identified, coinciding with the historical Carrington workings and the gold rich panel that has returned results including 17m @ 22.1g/t gold and 20m @ 18.21g/t gold.
Sunshine Metals says this represents an early validation of the “hot zone” concept.
Further, a third zone is inferred on the western end of the Liontown resource. The projected target zone coincides with the Liontown West electromagnetic target underscoring this as an “exciting” drill target.
Sunshine Metals is an explorer and developer focused on its projects in Queensland, specifically its flagship Ravenswood Consolidated Project which lies within a district that has produced over 20 million ounces of gold and 14Mt of volcanic massive sulphides ore.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Sunshine Metals
