Argent Minerals Limited (ASX:ARD) has now revealed further upside and potential scalability for its Kempfield project in New South Wales.
The project currently hosts a JORC Resource of 52 million silver ounce equivalent, but this appears to be just the beginning.
Independent resource specialists, H&S Consultants Pty Ltd, has delivered a JORC compliant Exploration Target which has at the upper end, an opportunity to triple the resource.
The now quantified upside potential includes:
- Lower end of range: 6.4 million silver ounces, 20,000 gold ounces, 60,000 tonnes of zinc and 30,000 tonnes of lead, estimating an additional 13 million silver ounce equivalent resource.
- Upper end of range: 64 million silver ounces, 390,000 gold ounces, 480,000 tonnes of zinc and 240,000 tonnes of lead, estimating an additional 100 million silver ounce equivalent resource.
What does this mean?
A best scenario has the estimate and current resource passing a milestone of a 150 million silver ounce equivalent resource that includes 100 million ounces of silver, 0.5 million ounces of gold, and 1 million tonnes of base metals zinc and lead (in a 2:1 zinc:lead ratio favouring the best price performer of the two).
Catalysts
With the above estimates in mind, additional key information to provide a boost to economics would include delivering an increase in recoveries, or simply additional exploration success.
The 2018 drilling program is designed to enable an enhanced resource estimate to be completed, and considering Argent will use reverse circulation drilling, the company is set for highly anticipated news flow in the New Year.