STAVELY Minerals (ASX: SVY) has reported “outstanding” shallow, thick, high-grade copper-gold intercepts at its 100pc-owned Thursday Gossan prospect in Victoria, 250km west of Melbourne.
The WA company’s shares skyrocketed 264pc to 87.5c with the results that included two intercepts: 32m at 5.88pc copper, and 1g/t gold and 58g/t silver at 62m.
The intercepts also included 12m at 14.3pc copper, 1g/t gold and 124g/t silver at 62m down hole, and 2m at 40pc copper, 3g/t gold and 517g/t silver.
Stavely said that the current phase of drilling was evaluating near-surface high-grade mineralisation while it reviewed all results and data from the deep diamond drilling at the source porphyry.
Stavely described the mineralisation as a “massive to semi-massive sulphide and quartz sulphide with early pyrite, fractured and brecciated by later copper sulphides dominated by chalcopyrite, bornite and chalcocite”.
While it remains unsure why the interval of high-grade nickel and cobalt mineralisation below the copper-gold-silver was spatially segregated, it has suggested that it could be the result of the hydrothermal fluid acquiring the metals – similar to the circumstances at the Avebury nickel deposit in Tasmania.
Stavely executive chair Chris Cairns said that the company’s decision to use the Magma/Butte high-grade structurally-controlled mineralisation model for exploration drilling had been validated and rewarded by the results.
“It’s not often in the career of an explorer that you see 40pc copper grades over sub-metre intervals, let alone two metres,” he said.
“Our first step-out hole, collared some 160m to the south-west, has also intersected a thick zone of structurally controlled semi massive to massive sulphide mineralisation.
“We are eagerly awaiting assays from that hole and results from further step-out drilling which is currently in progress.”
