ASX listed Adriatic Metals has significantly expanded its land position in central Bosnia, with the Government approving its application to broaden the existing concessions at the company’s Vares project.
The authorisations strongly endorse the company’s longer-term ambition and commitment to exploration and mining development in the country, where it is on the verge of completing a maiden JORC compliant mineral resource estimate for the exciting Rupice prospect.
The new approvals increase the land holdings at Rupice more than 5-fold and includes a 500m region north and down-plunge of a 66 metre intersection of high-grade mineralisation that returned an amazing grade of 9.5% zinc, 4.9% lead, 2.4g/t gold, 187g/t silver, 0.5% copper and 56% barite from 204m down-hole in October.
According to the company, this area is a high priority for further exploratory drilling and preparations for access are well underway.
The land expansion at Rupice also provides all the necessary access for drilling at the Brestic Jurasevac prospect just over 1km to the southeast, which contains historical workings but no modern exploration activity.
The expanded concession at Rupice also takes in the prospective looking Borovica corridor, centred about 1.5km to the south southwest, which contains numerous undeveloped prospects with underlying conductive geophysical anomalies, which may represent base metal sulphide mineral occurrences.
Most of these prospects have had no definitive exploration since the 1960s.
11.5km southeast of Rupice, Adriatic has also broadened its land position over the Veovaca prospect, where it has already defined a JORC-compliant mineral resource of 4.44 million tonnes grading 1.96% zinc, 1.11% lead, 58g/t silver, 0.09g/t gold and 20% barite.
The expansion at Veovaca will allow the company to commence modern exploration and drilling campaigns over the significant base metal prospects of Orti, Seleste and Mekuse, where historical work yielded positive results from geophysics, surface trenching and limited drilling.
It has been a stellar year for a cashed-up Adriatic, whose market cap was sitting at just under $90m this week.
Adriatic CEO Geraint Harris said: “The approval of the amendment is the result of months of very constructive work by our team in Bosnia in conjunction with the government agencies ... It clearly demonstrates the positive environment for mining in Bosnia and the willingness of both the Municipality of Vares and of Zenica-Doboj Canton to work cooperatively with Adriatic to significantly expand our land holding.”
“We look forward to following up on our gradient array IP geophysics (GAIP) and the historical exploration with modern exploration techniques and focussed drilling campaigns.”
The company believes there is significant potential to extend existing areas of identified base metal and precious metal mineralisation into new discoveries on its expanded tenement position at both the Rupice and Veovaca prospect concessions in Bosnia.
