Alicanto Minerals Ltd (ASX:AQI) has made its next step towards establishing a JORC resource at the Sala Silver-Lead-Zinc Project in Sweden by kicking off an extensive drilling program.
Previous high-grade results of up to 7.1 metres at 81 g/t silver, 10.4% zinc and 0.6% lead have led to the establishment of a three-stage exploration program, with the first step aiming to define a maiden resource within the area of historical and recent step-out drilling.
Step two will focus on step-out drilling from the central resource to grow the scale of the Sala system while step three will see the beginning of a regional campaign.
Little modern exploration
Historical review of data at the Sala Project suggests almost no modern systematic exploration has been conducted over the greater project area, with historic work focused on the underground extraction at the Sala mine.
Alicanto intends to take a back-to-basics approach to the greater tenement package and complete regional exploration over the entire highly prospective tenement package.
Two drill rigs are on-site to carry out the 10,000-metre program with 4,000 metres already completed and a third rig is being mobilised.
Increased capacity in light of results
AQI managing director Peter George said: "In light of the strong results and visuals reported from our initial drilling and our desire to establish a resource as quickly as possible, we have increased our drilling capacity from one rig to three.
“The grades within our initial focus area are exceptional and we believe that this is just the start.
“Sala was only mined down to 290 metres and they pulled out more than 200 million ounces of silver and 35,000 tonnes of lead.
“We have already identified multiple lodes up to 35 metres in width of high-grade mineralisation, more than 800 metres along strike from the old mine at 500 metres down dip of surface mineralisation with strong indications of a lot more in the vicinity.”
Overview map showing location of major polymetallic skarn deposits surrounding the Sala Silver-Lead-Zinc Project including Garpenberg and Falun.
The Sala project is around 50 kilometres from Boiden’s operating Garpenberg Mine, which has produced more than 400 million tonnes of ore and has a current resource of 151.5 million tonnes at 2.75% zinc, 1.3% zinc and 86.9 g/t silver.
Alicanto believes the mineralisation at the Sala Prince target is comparable to that of the Garpenberg Mine and has developed its strategy around delivering a major polymetallic mining project at Sala through exploration and resource development.
Next steps
To date, four holes have been completed and another two holes two in progress.
Assays are pending for three holes, with lab turnaround time currently up to six weeks.
High-grade samples have been prioritised to speed up turnaround time.