DiscovEx targets WA gold and base metals

DiscovEx Resources has received encouraging results from its initial phase of air core drilling at the company’s Sylvania gold project 15km south-west of Newman in WA. A total of 109 holes for 6060m were drilled across five prospect areas previously defined by a multi-staged soil geochemistry program.

Results include gold intersections of 4m at 76 parts per billion and 4m at 68ppb from another hole. The results have highlighted several key structures that may be associated with gold deposition within the project’s boundaries.

Coincidentally, a further series of 4m-base-metal-intersections were also raked in with a single hole delivering 0.15 per cent nickel and 0.03 per cent cobalt and other holes yielding 0.12 per cent copper and 0.26 per cent zinc. The appearance of base metals has provided DiscovEx with encouraging targets for further exploration.

DiscovEx Resources Managing Director, Toby Wellman said: “As a first-pass drill program in an area completely under explored for gold, the information we have generated has been invaluable in understanding both the structural controls on mineralisation and the more favourable rocks to be focussing on.”

The haul of gold and base metal results will be used to refine the geological and structural understanding of the project and to move additional prospects to the drill-ready stage. The information has also enabled DiscovEx to prioritise several recently generated geochemical targets, including the high priority Contact prospect where detailed geological mapping was recently completed in conjunction with the air core program.

The mapping efforts at Contact identified a ‘fuchsite’ altered shear zone coincident with some elevated gold, arsenic, antimony and silver soil results. The company believes the partially outcropping structure is the source of the element anomalism at the prospect and interprets it to fit within a broader fluid pathway that has been defined over a strike length of 2.5km before being obscured by the covering soils in the north-west.

The explorer’s new priority structural and geochemical targets at Contact are anticipated to be drilled by the end of the year following heritage clearance and relevant approvals.

Notably, the project also hosts a resource of 2.98 million tonnes at 4.94 per cent zinc, 1.59 per cent lead and 15 grams per tonne silver. DiscovEx has inked a heritage agreement over key tenements that host the resource to bring forth granting of the applied tenement. Once granted the explorer plans to run an induced polarisation geophysical survey across the project’s central fault zone for base metal mineralisation as part of its assessment of the project’s broader potential.

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