Recent drilling by Asiamet Resources Limited (LON:ARS, CVE:ARS) confirmed further extensions to the mineralisation at its BKM copper deposit, both along strike and at depth.
The company said resource infill drilling results have confirmed “a very robust resource with excellent continuity”.
The drilling update follows hot on the heels of Monday’s encouraging test work on the copper deposit in Indonesia.
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ACCESS details of the latest drilling results
Shares in Asiamet rose 6.6% in early deals as the company said it expected that a large proportion of the current BKM resource will be upgraded to the higher confidence “measured and indicated” mineral resource categories when the new resource statement is completed.
This will then feed into the mining engineering studies and the reporting of initial ore reserves for the BKM project.
Assay results from the infill and expansion drilling programme at BKM are nearly complete, with samples from just five holes outstanding.
Once the remaining assays are received over the next week the mineral resource update can be completed shortly thereafter.
"The BKM resource upgrade and infill drilling has been completed on time at the end of April 2017 as part of the feasibility study plan,” observed Peter Bird, Asiamet’s chief executive officer.
“Results within this release and previous releases this year have confirmed the continuity of mineralisation within the deposit has more than verified that which was assumed in the PEA [preliminary economic assessment].
“We are very comfortable with the original PEA assumptions and the recent extensions to mineralisation outside the previously defined envelope encourage us from the perspective of having the ability to grow our resource base over time.
“The immediate task now is to incorporate all the assay results into an updated resource model for use in the mine design and engineering work, following which an initial mineral reserve can be reported," he added.