YTC drills solid copper hits at Nymagee
THE DRILL SERGEANT: YTC Resources continues to receive encouraging copper results from an ongoing drilling program at the Nymagee copper project (YTC-90%) in the Cobar Basin, New South Wales.
The results of the second round of drilling has arrived a shallow drill program the company had designed to evaluate shallow copper mineralisation in detail in order to complete an estimation of a shallow copper resource at Nymagee.
The drilling has encouraged YTC to consider the project’s potential for the establishment of an open-pit copper operation prior to developing the higher grade underground operation.
According to YTC the latest results highlight:
– Repeated broad intervals of strong copper mineralisation of 0.5 per cent to 3 per cent copper at shallow depths;
– Strong oxide-supergene copper enrichment with individual assays to greater than 20% copper; and
– Zones of shallow gold enrichment including 2 metres at 3.47grams per tonne gold Au from 5 metres.
“These are very strong results and look to have established the northern zone as a very attractive open pit mining proposition,” YTC chief executive officer Rimas Kairaitis said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“YTC is continuing with the aggressive drilling program on the shallow zone with strong expectations for further success.”
The drilling program is being carried out to test the shallow copper mineralisation at Nymagee and has so far been successful in extending the known zones of copper mineralisation.
YTC has received results from 14 RC holes and 1 diamond hole, which the company said confirm the continuity and thickness of mineralisation.
Results from the shallow drilling program include:
– 10m at 6.7% copper, and 13g/t silver from 15m;
– 10m at 4.3% copper, 16g/t silver and 0.27g/t gold from 102m;
– 17m at 2.1% copper, 12g/t silver from 149m; and
– 31m at 1.0% copper from 72m.
YTC has also completed a second deep diamond drill hole beneath the historic Nymagee mine.
The hole passed approximately 100m beneath the previously drilled hole.
Visual logging of the drill core by YTC estimated the hole to have intersected a broad zone, of approximately 100m, of copper mineralisation greater than 0.5% copper from around 450m down hole.
YTC said it is encouraged by the width and persistence of copper mineralisation it has observed to date within the deep drilling at Nymagee, however it also said it still does not fully understand the controls on the high-grade lodes.
The deep drilling program is scheduled to continue for the next few months, after which the company expects to have gained a stronger understanding of the scale and extent of the Nymagee mineralisation at depth.
A third deep hole is now underway at approximately 250m depth testing approximately 50m north of the first deep hole.