Discovery Metals Limited said on Monday it has identified potentially significant copper mineralisation at its Aphrodite prospect, some 170 kilometres south west of the Company’s Boseto copper project in Botswana.
In an update to the market, the BSE quotaed company noted the new discovery confirms that copper mineralisation extends throughout the Company’s extensive prospecting licences in the Kalahari Copperbelt, and provides potential for discovery and development of new projects within the region.
The RC drilling program comprising 11 drill holes was conducted at Aphrodite, targeting a significant copper-in-soil anomaly over a 14 kilometre strike length.
Discovery Metals’ Managing Director, Brad Sampson, said the drilling results show significant potential for exciting new discoveries in the region.
“These are outstanding results from the first exploration work in this area. We have confirmed the continuity of copper-silver mineralisation across the entire Kalahari Copperbelt and at the same time have discovered a new style of copper mineralisation not previously known to exist in the area that creates even more exploration potential across the region,” he said.
Early results have indicated copper mineralisation of a style that has been viewed as typical of the Kalahari Copperbelt, lying within the Prospective Horizon at the base of the D’kar Formation, which hosts Discovery Metals’ currently known discoveries at Zeta, Zeta NE and Plutus, in the Boseto Zone. Interpretation of aeromagnetic surveys, with drilling in the South West Kalahari Zone, has confirmed the occurrence and continuation of the Prospective Horizon over some 750 kilometres of strike length.
Importantly, in addition to the identification of copper mineralisation in the Prospective Horizon at Aphrodite, the drilling program also identified a new style of copper-silver mineralisation, sitting within a distinctly separate shear zone.
The shear zone is located approximately 250 metres to the south of the Prospective Horizon and presents a form of mineralisation previously unknown in the Kalahari Copperbelt.
Its identification creates exciting additional exploration potential beyond the known Prospective Horizon, at levels of the stratigraphy previously thought unlikely to host mineralisation.
Diamond core drilling is currently underway to improve understanding of the shear zone hosted copper mineralisation. Figure 5 shows examples of mineralisation intersected in the first diamond core hole drilled in the Aphrodite area by Discovery Metals.
Over the past six months, a shallow RC orientation drilling has defined additional geochemical anomalies over both the Hades and Asteria areas in the Ghanzi tenements. The geochemical survey has returned a maximum of 2,350ppm Cu in XRF results and suggests strong opportunities for further resources of a similar type to those of the Boseto Zone in areas towards the Namibian Border.
Discovery Metals currently has one RC drill rig and one diamond core drill rig operating in the South West Kalahari Zone, exploring for both styles of mineralisation. In 2013, drilling is planned to continue in the Ghanzi District, testing both the stratigraphic target at the base of the D’Kar Formation and structural targets identified in aeromagnetic surveys conducted in the area by Discovery Metals in 2011.
