Empire Metals starts drilling campaign at Central Menzies

Resource exploration and development company Empire Metals announced the start of a reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign at the Central Menzies Gold Project on Thursday.

The AIM-traded firm said the campaign was on the back of a soil sampling programme at the project, and a review of the historical drillhole database, which identified two mineralised corridors with elevated gold concentrations, known as the Teglio and Nugget Patch prospects.

It said an RC drilling programme of more than 2,100 metres was designed, and was expected to be completed in September, keeping the fast-track development of the project on schedule and in budget.

The recently-purchased high-resolution magnetic data was described as “useful” in providing the location and extent of the shallow ironstone cover across the licence area, providing focus for the soil geochemical sampling programme just completed.

Empire said the areas selected for soil sampling represented the “greatest prospectivity”, based on the location of historical workings as well as areas of limited previous drilling.

Anomalies from basement geology were identified in ironstone-free areas at the historical Teglio workings, with other mineralised corridors said to be evident from the existing drill dataset.

Two of the mineralised corridors were identified for immediate RC drilling, being Teglio and Nugget Patch, based on elevated gold concentration within the licence, and the potential to generate “significant” strike and lateral extension from old workings.

“The technical focus and determined effort made by our geological team to identify drill-ready targets has been extremely encouraging and has meant that we can now start a substantial drilling campaign with a high degree of confidence in the targets selected,” said managing director Shaun Bunn.

“After reviewing the historical drilling database, and taking into account the geophysical data analysis, we have confirmed two highly prospective mineralised zones which will be the primary focus of the coming RC drilling campaign.

“We anticipate adding further drilling targets to the development plan as we complete the geochemical mapping based on the recently completed soil sampling programme.”

Bunn said the company would update shareholders once it has reviewed the soil sampling data, and when drill results become available.

“In the meantime, we are completing our initial assessment of the small-scale mining opportunities at our Eclipse Gold Project and expect to provide a technical update shortly.”

At 1143 BST, shares in Empire Metals were flat at 2.05p.