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(Sharecast News) - Base and precious metals explorer and producer Phoenix Copper announced on Tuesday that its 2022 drilling programme was underway at the Empire Mine Project in Idaho.
The AIM-traded firm said the programme was expected to further its understanding of ammonium thiosulfate as a "non-toxic, environmentally friendly" reagent for the recovery of copper, gold, silver, and zinc from the Empire open pit resource.
It said it would also examine the possibility of bringing forward the production of precious metals.
In addition to the collection of PQ-diameter core samples of 85 millimetres for metallurgical testing, geotechnical data for enhanced pit slope stability studies and resource assaying for enhanced continuity of copper, gold, silver, and zinc grades would be gathered from the same core.
Following the PQ-core drilling in the Empire open pit, the drill rig would move to the Red Star silver-lead resource and the Empire deep sulphide target to conduct further exploratory drilling through to late autumn.
As well as the drilling programme, the company said it was completing ongoing open pit engineering trade-off studies for further economic and environmental optimisation as part of the feasibility study process.
"Our 2022 drilling season kicked off as scheduled in early June with the arrival of a core drilling rig capable of drilling PQ-diameter core," said chief executive officer Ryan McDermott.
"The drilling programme will initially focus on collecting core samples for metallurgical and geotechnical studies from the Empire open pit, which remains our flagship project.
"The results of these studies may enable us to bring forward production of gold and silver, currently scheduled as a second phase of the open pit project."
McDermott explained that once the Empire open pit drilling was complete, the rig would begin further exploratory drilling in the Red Star and Empire Sulphides areas.
"We are actively searching for further drilling capacity for this season and will contract additional drill rigs when and if they become available.
"The Empire Open Pit feasibility study remains in progress whilst our engineers complete further trade-off and optimization studies.
"The global volatility in pricing for everything from structural steel to chemical reagents has also slowed progress on the study."
However, the company was receiving "some indications" that markets were slowly calming and supply backlogs were shortening, Ryan McDermott added.
"The Phoenix team is continuing to focus on what we know and what we can control.
"We know that the Empire open pit copper mine is ideally suited to provide copper for the world's transition to clean energy and, as a result, will be in high demand in the coming years.
"Our team is working diligently to collect the necessary data, permits, and funds so that we can advance the project in a way which will be most economic, while minimising our environmental footprint."
At 1537 BST, shares in Phoenix Copper were up 1.94% at 31.6p.
Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.
