Atalaya Mining pleased with latest drilling at PMV

Atalaya Mining announced the results of five additional drill holes from its ongoing resource definition drilling programme at Proyecto Masa Valverde (PMV) in southern Spain on Thursday.

The AIM-traded firm said PMV is located 28 kilometres south of its 15 million tonnes-per-annum mill at Proyecto Riotinto.

It said the new drill results included the best continuous copper intercept at PMV to date of 125 metres at 1.19% copper, including high grade intervals of 12 metres at 2.29% copper, 19 metres at 2.56% copper, and 15 metres at 2.27% copper.

The results were expected to increase the copper grade in the upcoming NI 43-101 resource estimate for PMV, which was planned for release by the end of March.

Higher-grade material from PMV had the potential to displace ore from the Cerro Colorado pit, Atalaya said, allowing it to increase its copper production while maintaining current processing rates.

It said the intersected mineralisation was mostly stockwork-type, with minor massive sulphides, which was expected to have positive metallurgical implications.

Three rigs were continuing to drill at PMV, as part of the firm’s €10m exploration programme for 2022.

The company said the objective of the ongoing drilling programme was to confirm, improve and expand the historical NI 43-101-compliant inferred resource of 66 million tonnes at 0.67% copper, 1.92% zinc, 0.90% lead, and 0.63 grams of gold and 34 grams of silver per tonne.

In addition to the Masa Valverde deposit, PMV also included Majadales, which was discovered in 2019 and was not included in any previous resource estimates, as well as several geophysical and geochemical drill-ready targets.

“These new drill results have exceeded our expectations in many ways, most notably in terms of the copper and gold grades, confirming our belief that Proyecto Masa Valverde is one of the best undeveloped polymetallic projects in the Iberian Pyrite Belt and also in Europe,” said chief executive officer Alberto Lavandeira.

“High copper grades over significant true thicknesses bodes well for the NI 43-101 compliant resource statement scheduled for late in the first quarter of 2022 and also opens the possibility to consider large scale underground mining scenarios for future project development.”

Lavandeira said the high gold grades encountered were “particularly notable”, now that Atalaya had approved construction of an industrial-scale E-LIX plant, which had the potential to economically extract many key metals from polymetallic deposits, including copper, zinc and gold.

“Finally, we have increased Atalaya's exploration budget to €10 million for 2022 will allow the company to continue to advance PMV together with initial exploration works at Proyecto Riotinto East and the recently-acquired Proyecto Ossa Morena.”

At 1206 GMT, shares in Atalaya Mining were flat at 426p.