Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) has drilled its initial two follow-up holes at the emerging Silica Hill Prospect within its 100%-owned Commonwealth Project located in New South Wales.
While lab assays are pending, preliminary results show thick widths of stockwork and narrow veins spaced 30-50 centimetres apart containing extensive visible silver minerals and zinc, lead and copper sulphides.
Significantly, gold is unable to be estimated without lab assays, however previous results indicate that gold is likely to be present in places.
Diamond hole CMIPT063 returned a 116 metre thick zone of veins from 57 metres depth and diamond hole CMIPT061 also intersected a 90 metre thick zone of silver and molybdenum.
These preliminary results represent the first indications of the anticipated high grade feeder zones to the Silica Hill system that may extend for up to one kilometre to the north east.
How valuable can this feeder zone be?
The proposed high-grade feeder zone is interpreted to possibly extend for a further 1,000 metres to the north east.
Such feeder zones occur within gold-rich volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits, a class of deposit only recognised within the past 20 years.
The type-deposit of the gold-rich VMS systems is the well-known Eskay Creek deposit in Canada which was mined mostly during the early 2000s and contained over 4 million ounces of gold and 180 million ounces of silver.
The gold and silver was in numerous rich ore shoots over a vertical extent of at least 700 metres.
Resource expansion opportunity
A resource drill-out at Silica Hill has the potential to significantly expand the high grade gold-silver-zinc-lead-copper resources already defined at the Commonwealth Project.
These stand at an Inferred Resource of 720,000 tonnes at 2.8 g/t gold, 48 g/t silver, 1.5% zinc and 0.6% lead or 4.5 g/t gold equivalent for 110,000 gold equivalent ounces.
Within this resource is a massive sulphide lens about 50 metres by 50 metres by about 8 metres thick in size.
The lens has an Inferred Resource of 145,000 tonnes at 4.5 g/t gold, 4.8% zinc, 1.7% lead and 0.2% copper or 10 g/t gold equivalent for 47,000 gold equivalent ounces.
Preliminary drill hole details
The preliminary results have been estimated visually and with a hand held XRF instrument, which is incapable of detecting gold in this situation.
Hole CMIPT063 tested a modest north east extension of the mineralised zone and returned a 116 metre thick zone of veins from 57 metres down hole comprising a lower 70 metre thick zone of silver and base metal-rich veins and an upper 40 metre thick zone of silver-rich veins.
These veins, although narrow, contain high grades of zinc and lead (up to 20%), good grades of copper (up to 2%) and very high to exceptional grades of silver (commonly in the hundreds of grams and up to 7,000 g/t silver).
Hole CMIPT061 tested the north west extension of mineralisation and has intersected a 90 metre thick zone.
The zone comprises an upper 30 metre thick zone of silver rich veins and a lower 60 metre thick zone of 50 ppm to 200 ppm molybdenum.