Avalon Minerals improves Swedish copper grades

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Avalon Minerals (ASX: AVI) has received assay results for the latest five completed drill holes, part of an ongoing drill program being undertaken on the D Zone prospect on the company’s Viscaria project, in northern Sweden.

 

Project location. Source: Company announcement

 

Avalon reported four of the drill holes intersected thick, high-grade copper and iron mineralisation.

All five drill holes have extended the area of known mineralisation by up to 150 metres down dip and 150 metres along strike.

Best intersections from the drilling include:

–    8 metres at 2.7 per cent copper equivalent (CuEq), within a larger mineralisation zone of 12 metres at 2.1 per cent CuEq;

–    10.7m at 2.4 per cent CuEq, within a larger mineralisation zone of 19.1m at 1.6 per cent CuEq;

–    8m at 2.2 per cent CuEq, within a larger mineralisation zone of 31m at 1.2 per cent CuEq; and

–    7m at 1.8 per cent CuEq, within a larger mineralisation zone of 26m at 0.9 per cent CuEq.

“The latest assay results from D Zone show the high-grade plunging copper-iron zones are getting better grade with depth, with grades from this batch of drill holes consistently in excess of 2 per cent copper equivalent, over 8 to 10 metre widths,” Avalon Minerals managing director Jeremy Read said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“In addition to the zones grading greater than 2 per cent CuEq, the overall mineralisation package is still up to 30 metres thick, which is very encouraging.

“The continued success of the D Zone resource extension drill program indicates that there is excellent potential for the D Zone Mineral Resource to be significantly extended at depth.

“This should then enhance the economics of the D Zone Mineral Resource and deliver Development Cases A and C, which would result in a $78 million increase to the Net Present Value of D Zone, to $126 million.”

Avalon’s current drilling program has the aim of completing approximately 25,000m of drilling, of which approximately half has been drilled.

The company said its objective is to extend the known Mineral Resources at the A and D Zone prospects and deliver on the potential increases to the project Net Present Value outlined in a Scoping Study that was completed in 2012.