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Antipa proves high-grade gold-copper runs deep at Minyari

Just a few weeks away from the release of a resource upgrade at Antipa’s 100% owned Minyari Dome Project in WA’s Paterson Province and the final drilling results have delivered significant high-grade (even bonanza-grade) gold and copper, along with some silver and cobalt mineralisation, at depth.

Drilling at Antipa Minerals’ (ASX:AZY) Minyari deposit has previously proven there is no shortage of thick, high-grade gold and copper near surface. Now the final nine holes of the recent campaign have also confirmed there is very high-grade copper and gold at depth.

The Minyari Dome Project is shaping up as a massive discovery, with mineralisation at Minyari and WACA still remaining open at depth even after a 42,000m+ drilling program, and the final hole drilled at the WACA deposit uncovering gold, copper and silver mineralisation 150m to the west.

Gold mineralisation hit bonanza grades of 150.5 grams per tonne (g/t) from nearly 500m below surface, while copper grades reached 6.40% at nearly 400m deep.

Minyari drilling returned top hits of 98m at 1.41g/t gold and 0.07% copper, including 73m at 1.82g/t gold and 0.08% copper and 4m at 6.86g/t gold and 0.32% copper from 453m, with 34.6m at 2.87g/t gold and 0.12% copper from 490.4m and 6.6m at 9.2g/t gold and 0.25% copper also from 490.4m.

The significant intercepts that also delivered cobalt and silver at depth featured 51.3m at 1.98g/t gold, 0.23% copper and 0.07% cobalt from 288.7m, including 14m at 6.09g/t gold, 0.70% copper and 0.14% cobalt and 2.5m at 11.82g/t gold, 3.61% copper, 8.44g/t silver and 0.29% cobalt from 290m.

The bonanza hit of 0.5m at 150.5g/t gold and 0.03% cobalt came from a broader intercept of 12.7m at 6.32g/t gold from 594.3m.

Managing Director Roger Mason said these deeper extensional results continued to highlight the development opportunity demonstrating the potential for significant resource upside and extend the thick high-grade breccia style mineralisation at depth at Minyari.

“Major step-out drill holes 21MYD0509 and 21MYD0510 intersected thick zones of high-grade gold-copper mineralisation, extending Minyari’s northern mineralisation a whopping 210 metres down dip,” he said.

“Interestingly the recently discovered Sundown prosect, which is located 300 metres to the west of this area, demonstrates a similar near surface gold-copper mineralisation expression to the shallow northern region of Minyari, highlighting the potential for significant increases in the mineralisation grade and thickness with depth at Sundown.”

At Minyari, high-grade gold with copper, silver and cobalt mineralisation extends for 500m of strike across a width of up to 300m and now runs down to 670m below the surface.

The high-grade mineralisation at WACA extends for 650m of strike, spanning a width of up to 100m and has now been extended down to 510m.

“Over at WACA, the discovery of a broad zone of gold-copper-silver mineralisation located 150 metres west of the resource provides further resource upside, with drill hole 21MYD0511 returning multiple narrow intersections grading +1g/t gold, up to 1% copper and up to 12g/t silver across a 100-metre downhole zone,” Mason noted.

Mineralisation remains open in several directions at both Minyari and WACA.

Significant resource upgrade on the horizon

Antipa expects the drilling results to have a “material positive impact” on the existing Minyari-WACA 2017 resource, which currently totals 723,000 ounces of gold at 2.0g/t and 26,000 tonnes of copper at 0.24%, plus some significant silver and cobalt credits.

A resource update is due for release in late March/early April.

“The company looks forward to delivering an increase to the resource, followed by an initial assessment of a potential development opportunity, and also testing multiple additional prospects and new targets which could increase the resource further and enhance the development potential,” Mason said.

Late last year, Antipa revealed the ‘camp-style’ gold-copper potential of its 100% owned Minyari Dome Project right next door to Newcrest Mining’s (ASX:NCM) massive Telfer gold-copper-silver mine and processing facility.

A reference to ‘camp-style’ potential indicates the possible significant scale of a project, with these multiple near-surface and at-depth discoveries remaining open.

With this continued exploration success at Minyari Dome, the project has shown potential to be both an open pit and underground mining operation.

Antipa is also assessing the greenfield potential in the Paterson and is expecting results for the remainder of the 2021 drilling program within the next three weeks.

These results, along with the results of a significant Minyari Dome project soil geochemical sampling program completed late last year, will help Antipa pinpoint targets for further follow-up drill testing this year.

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