DiscovEx Resources says it is cashed up to bolster exploration activities at its Sylvania and Edjudina projects in Western Australia after banking more than $250,000 from recent tenement and shares sales.
The company says an induced-polarisation (IP) geophysical survey will follow up on previous soil-sampling gold and lead hits at Sylvania in multiple areas of both disseminated and semi-massive sulphides along the Prairie Downs Faults Zone (PDFZ) – an area where it believes gold mineralisation has been largely overlooked in the past.
The sale of DiscovEx’ shares in Orecorp and Si6 Metals will give the exploration program an extra cash boost, with management planning to immediately re-inject the funds back into the ground. The company also collected $125,000 from a tenement sale.
DiscovEx Resources managing director Toby Wellman said: “We eagerly await the results from the IP survey at Sylvania which should be completed within the next three weeks. Given the known mineralisation at Prairie Downs should give a favourable response to the geophysical technique, the hope is that additional targets will be defined along the Prairie Downs Fault Zone. Costs for these works will be funded by sale proceeds brought in over the last month, with the Company continually looking at alternative funding pathways to meet our capital requirements. These additional funds have been put straight back into the ground, to further build on our targets at Sylvania and Edjudina.”
Management says Sylvania’s phase-one soils program was the first gold-focused exploration ever completed proximal to the PDFZ. It was comprised of 1383 samples taken from the southern tenements within the project area and the program identified multiple anomalous gold and lead zones.
DiscovEx says its sampling results suggest a significant large-scale anomalous gold and lead trend of up to 3.5km, interpreted as being parallel to the PDFZ and coincident with structures showing significant shearing and alteration. The company says the highest tenor gold result of 79 parts per billion was returned from a zone interpreted as having high strain associated with strong carbonate alteration and quartz veining.
DiscovEx says the alteration structures are up to about 150m wide and likely to be interconnected to the PDFZ through linking fault structures, which may play a role in the development of gold and base metal mineralisation in the region.
Other soil sampling gold hits include 74ppb, 45ppb, 46ppb, 38ppb, 33ppb, 26ppb and 17ppb. Lead hits include 1315 parts per million, 679ppm, 674ppm, 327ppm, 288ppm and 252ppm.
DiscovEx plans to follow up its geophysical survey with more soil sampling at a tighter grid spacing in a bid to firm up results of phase-one soil-sampling results.
Below the surface, historic drilling within the Sylvania project area has returned encouraging drill hits such as 1m at 3.7 per cent copper and 11m at 0.35 grams per tonne gold at the Husky prospect, within an interpreted 13m-wide quartz vein.
The Wolf prospect has also returned solid drill hits as high as 8m at 11.1 per cent zinc and 8 per cent lead, 8m at 9.96 per cent zinc and 8.5 per cent lead and 14.4m at 7.7 per cent zinc and 6.2 per cent lead.
Although not the focus of current exploration efforts, it is worth noting that the Sylvania project area contains the Prairie Downs lead-zinc deposit, which boasts an inferred and indicated resource of 2.98 million tonnes at 4.94 per cent zinc, 1.59 per cent lead and 15g/t silver.
Sylvania also contains the Spearhole detrital channel iron resource that occurs from surface or near surface with consistent grades and thickness and has a 2004 inferred mineral resource of 1400 million tonnes at 23.5 per cent iron.
Sylvania’s proximity to Newman, in addition to having both a major bitumen highway and gas pipeline adjacent to and within the tenure, provide excellent baseline infrastructure options for future project development.
The project is about 60km to the west of one of WA’s newest, large-scale gold mine developments operated by Capricorn Metals at Karlawinda, which has a mineral resource estimate of 2.15 million ounces at 0.8g/t gold.
DiscovEx says soil sampling at its Edjudina project, about 170km north-east of Kalgoorlie, is now complete and identified a gold anomaly about 4.3km long that remains open to the north. The company says additional soil sampling has been planned to sterilise the edges of the anomaly.
Edjudina is along strike from Matsa Resources’ Fortitude project that has a mineral resource of 8.1 million tonnes at 1.9g/t gold for 489,000 ounces. The project also contains the Hornet East and West prospects that gave assays of 1m at 5.3g/t gold beneath soil geochemical anomalies and the Spartan prospect, where air-core (AC) drilling delivered 1m splits of up to 4.8g/t gold from bedrock and overburden targets.
The results came from 188 AC drillholes in a campaign jointly funded in an 80-20 venture with Gateway Mining.
With the recent cash injection being put straight back into the ground, DiscovEx has shown its faith in Sylvania and Edjudina’s potential and may well be one to watch as more soil sampling results flow in.
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By Andrew Duffy
