Sunstone Metals Ltd (ASX:STM) is set to put diamond drills to ground next week at the Limon gold-silver discovery, part of the Bramaderos Project in Southern Ecuador.
An area of known high-grade mineralisation is being targeted where recent trenching produced a plethora of high-grade results, including 14.95 metres at 4.8 g/t gold, which contained 6.2 metres at 10.7 g/t, and 3.9 metres at 8.4 g/t gold, with a high-grade component of 1.9 metres at 16.2 g/t.
The initial focus of the drilling will be on the Central Shoot and Western Target, which sit about 1 kilometre apart, highlighting the potential for a large, shallow, high-grade resource at Limon.
Establishing mineral resource estimate
“This is a pivotal drilling program central to our plan to establish a substantial resource at Limon which may in turn underpin an early production and cashflow opportunity,” Sunstone Metals managing director Patrick Duffy said.
“This is part of a longer-term strategy that would subsequently develop the much larger world-class gold-copper-silver porphyry systems at the Bramaderos Project.
“The outlook for the drilling is exceptionally strong given that we will be targeting areas where trenching has already established the presence of shallow high-grade mineralisation.
“Our previous drilling results at Limon are very exciting and we are aiming to deliver similar results across the multiple targets.
“We have previously delivered broad intervals such as 177 metres at 0.97 g/t gold and 10.1 g/t silver in hole LMDD017, and we have delivered narrower spectacular high-grade intervals such as 7.6 metres at 42.15 g/t gold and 43.9 g/t silver in hole LMDD026, both from Central Shoot.
“We believe there is immense potential to create rapid and substantial value for shareholders at Limon, particularly given the grade and shallow nature of the mineralisation.”
The Limon area holds a conceptual exploration target of 900,000 to 1.7 million ounces of gold equivalent, within 30-44 million tonnes at a grade of 0.9 to 1.2 g/t gold equivalent.
Assay results from the Western Target 1 have also expanded the areas for drill testing, while the Western Target 2’s assay results demonstrate mineralisation stretches from trench LM-28 to LM-07.
Limon gold-in-soils map showing extensive anomalous gold over an area of 1.7 kilometres by 1 kilometre.