AuKing Mining Ltd (ASX:AKN) is continuing to advance its majority-owned (75%) Koongie Park Copper/Zinc Project in north-eastern Western Australia following a major resource upgrade in April.
Koongie Park is situated in the highly mineralised Halls Creek Mobile Belt which also hosts the Savannah (Sally Malay) and Copernicus nickel projects, the Argyle diamond mine and the Nicolsons gold mining operation of Pantoro Ltd (ASX:PNR).
AuKing’s tenure holding comprises an area of more than 500 square kilometres covering over 40 kilometres of the base metals prospective Koongie Park Formation.
Koongie Park has already been the subject of significant exploration drilling and analysis since the 1970’s, often in line with movements in commodity prices.
Since its discovery, the Koongie Park project has been the subject of over 245 reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drill holes consisting of more than 50,000 metres of drilling in total.
The predominant focus of drilling has been at the Sandiego and Onedin deposits.
The company’s exploration campaigns since June 2021 have led to a 30% upgrade of the previous 6.8 million tonnes resource estimate.
In April, AuKing bolstered the JORC-compliant resource at Koongie Park to 8.9 million tonnes at 1.01% copper, 3.67% zinc, 0.16 gold, 32 g/t silver and 0.77% lead.
Notably, almost the entire resource is now in the indicated category with the potential for further discovery of significant cobalt mineralisation.
AuKing has also identified the potential to establish an open-pit mine at Onedin Deposit and to extend resources at Sandiego Deposit.
Onedin mineral resource estimate & metal tonnes.
Sandiego mineral resource estimate & metal tonnes.
AuKing continues to progress its activities, including drilling, at the Koongie Park Project along with metallurgical test-work at Onedin deposit supported by the completion of its recent share placement.
Drilling at Koongie
AuKing started drilling at Koongie Park on May 24 and has so far completed 2,694 metres of reverse circulation (RC) drilling across 16 holes.
A total of 14 holes have been drilled at the Onedin South prospect and encouragingly for the company, preliminary visual observations and pXRF analysis have indicated the presence of mineralisation in these holes.
The company is waiting for assay results to gain a full picture of what Onedin may hold.
AuKing has now moved the drill rig to the Emull prospect to carry out a minimum of eight RC drill holes and 1,000 metres of drilling.
Onedin test-work
The company is continuing test-work on the Onedin oxide and transition ores, with two significant results achieved so far:
- an ammonia leach in conjunction with certain reagents has shown that some copper (and, to a lesser extent zinc) is releasing from the iron oxide/hydroxide material that is prevalent in the upper sections of the Onedin oxide zone; and
- there exists a supergene blanket beneath the oxide zone that contains high-grade copper oxide minerals (such as cuprite and native copper). Based on test-work utilising an ammonia leach solution combined with certain reagents, AuKing has established a likely commercial recovery for these copper minerals in the supergene blanket zone.
These results provide encouragement for AuKing as the test-work program advances over the coming weeks.
Share placement
AuKing recently placed shares at 14 cents per share (shares are currently trading at around 8 cents), with one free free-attaching option for every three new shares applied for.
A total of 5,946,428 shares have been placed at an issue price of 14 cents per share (total proceeds $832,500 received) together with the issue of 3,567,856 free attaching options.
The balance of the placement (1,053,572 shares/ $147,500 proceeds) is expected to be completed shortly.
AKN’s board considers it a significant achievement to complete the placement and represents a strong show of support for AuKing and its project activities.