Alien Metals set to begin drilling at Elizabeth Hill

Exploration and development company Alien Metals announced on Wednesday that its inaugural drilling programme was due to begin in the coming days on the Elizabeth Hill Silver Project.

The AIM-traded firm said it had mobilised a diamond drill rig to start the programme, which would consist of seven diamond core holes for a planned total of 650 metres designed to test for extensions to the known mineralisation, both along strike and at depth, and to complete initial verification work on historical drilling.

It said the programme was also intended to test for a much larger mineralised system the company believes is present.

Historical drilling intersected “incredibly high-grade” zones with numerous intersections over 10,000 grams of silver per tonne, and a peak assay of 34,300 grams per tonne, or 3.4% silver.

Elizabeth Hill was mined between 1998 and 2000, producing 1.17 million ounces of silver from 16,800 tonnes of ore, equating to a grade of around 2,195 grams per tonne.

Mining ceased in 2000 due to the silver price falling below $5 per ounce, compared to the current spot price of around $25 per ounce.

The mine also produced Australia's largest silver nugget, the Karratha Queen, that weighed in at 145kg, or 4,677 ounces, which is now on display at the Perth Mint

“We have completed a considerable amount of research reviewing over 20 years of historical data on this project area, combined with the recent work by Southern Geoscience and our other technical consultants,” said chief executive officer and technical director Bill Brodie Good.

“We are very excited to be commencing our inaugural drilling programme, which we feel will add significant understanding to the known silver mineralisation, as well as targeting what we believe to be an even larger mineralised system that the silver orebody sits within.

“The West Pilbara is now recognised as a world-class mineral province with the potential to discover a major new significant nickel, copper and PGE hosting system in and around Elizabeth Hill, similar to the recently discovered VC7 and Andover nickel-cobalt discoveries along with the known, but still to be fully defined, Carlow Castle, Radio Hill and Mt Sholl precious and base metals discoveries.”

Brodie Good said Alien believed that a number of targets were never fully followed up on, and thus the initial seven-hole programme would focus on the historic orebody and its immediate surroundings.

“The focus of the programme is the production of the highest quality core from the main zones within the orebody to enable us to better understand the orebody and develop next stage work.”

At 1438 BST, shares in Alien Metals were up 11.74% at 0.87p.