Castillo Copper MD Simon Paull joined London South East this morning from Australia to talk through 'a major copper discovery' at the appropriately named Big One copper/cobalt deposit in Queensland, Australia which was announced to the market this morning 11th January 2021.
In an indepth interview with the MD, we learned that the two separate drill holes each have 'potentially economic intercepts' 40 metres and 44 metres wide at 1.64% and 1.19% copper - relatively close to the surface. "That's a major discovery for us" said Simon Paull.
This significantly extends the the known mineralisation at the site. What is not yet known is if these two spans link to one another.
"This is a big deal for us" acknowledged Simon Paull. "The holes are geographically apart, and there is a school of thought which says this might be one contained system, and further drilling of the resource will firm that up for us."
20 reverse circulation (RC) holes have been drilled so far, RC drilling being a lot cheaper than core. Diamond drilling is more expensive, "and we will be putting in some diamond holes a bit further along in the process".
"We have two futher packages of assays still to come back from the lab, and this will add to our knowledge. We will then have a think about whether to go deeper, go to diamond core in a different way, whether we put in more holes, or change the angle of attack. It's the rainy season now so we have the luxury of time to take a breath and re-evaluate."
"We probably do need to do more drilling to find out how far the mineralisation does extend in these two spans of 40 metres at roughly the same depth. We are also seeing a halo around the high grade ore which is a lot higher in mineralisation than we first anticipated which adds to the economic proposition, as does the depths which are relatively shallow, relatively easily mineable and relatively high grade. This builds the argument to go for a JORC-inferred resource and then hopefully a mining licence."
Castillo Coppe. (CCZ)