Anglo Asian Mining PLC (AIM:AAZ, OTC:AGXKF) confirmed that it has the potential to produce over 300,000 tonnes of copper from its Garadag porphyry deposit in Azerbaijan.
Anglo Asian acquired historic geological data from AzerGold CJSC relating to the Garadag deposit, which is hosted within the Garadag contract area and located north of the company's Gedabek and Xarxar contract areas.
This initial assessment has not been prepared according to the JORC standard. The company intends to prepare a mineral resource estimate using the JORC procedures on completion of the evaluation programme. The JORC resource should be ready in the middle of next year.
"Garadag hosts very significant quantities of copper,” said Stephen Westhead, vice-president of Anglo Asian in a statement. “It has the potential to meaningfully increase our production profile and alone provides us with considerable copper mineralisation."
"It is an important addition to the Company's growing portfolio of copper assets. While only a preliminary assessment, we are incredibly excited by Garadag's development potential, and believe it can produce between 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes of copper per annum. We are currently conducting further validation processes to provide additional confidence, including producing a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate," he added.
The Garadag contract area was granted to Anglo Asian in July 2022. It comprises 344 square kilometres and is located 16 kilometres to the north-north-east of the Gedabek processing facilities. In August 2022, the company acquired drill core, assays and other data about Garadag and the nearby Xarxar mineral occurrence from AzerGold CJSC.
The data include historical drilling results from exploration carried out during the Soviet era, as well as more modern work undertaken by the two previous owners of Garadag, namely Aimroc Ltd. and, most recently, AzerGold CJSC.