Empire Metals starts exploration at Pitfield copper-gold project

Empire Metals announced the start of exploration activities at the 615 square kilometre Pitfield copper-gold project on Monday, located in Western Australia.

The AIM-traded firm said Pitfield is hosted by neoproterozoic rocks coinciding with a “globally important” copper mineralisation era known for major copper-gold deposits, such as Newcrest’s Telfer Mine, Rio Tinto's Winu Project and the Greatland-Newcrest Havieron joint venture.

It said there were “multiple proximal historic copper mines and prospects”, including the historic Baxters copper mine at Arrino, along strike, which produced 106 tonnes of copper at a grade between 20% and 30% copper.

The favourable geology of the basin previously attracted major mining companies, including Kennecott, Carpentaria, BHP and CRA.

Two “highly-experienced” airborne geophysical survey companies had been engaged, which would separately complete an airborne electromagnetic survey and an airborne magnetic survey across the Pitfield tenement area.

The company reported confirmed “strong” magnetic stratigraphy and alteration within the project area, in regional magnetic surveys flown at a line spacing of 200 metres.

Plans for a more detailed magnetic survey had been made to cover the main area of enhanced magnetic response, which would provide “valuable” structural and stratigraphic details and context to geochemical exploration data, to assist with prospect-scale on-ground target definition.

Empire said it was also planning an airborne electromagnetic survey, which would cover the entire project area on 400 metre line spacing.

The key objective would be to map the geology of the Yandanooka basin, in particular to complement the magnetic data by highlighting potentially preferred host rocks for copper.

In addition, the survey would aim to identify any anomalous conductive areas that could relate to sulphide accumulations or native copper associated with mineralised systems.

“Pitfield represents an exceptional opportunity for the company to make a significant new discovery, being in an extremely favourable confluence of major geological structures and the only exposure of copper-prospective neoproterozoic sediments along the western margin of the Yilgarn,” said managing director Shaun Bunn.

“The collection of detailed geophysical data over the project area will greatly assist with the targeting of copper-gold anomalies and will guide our on-ground exploration work.

“The initiation of exploration activities at Pitfield marks a significant milestone in the company's transition to an Australian-focussed copper-gold explorer, and, whilst we are still at an early exploration stage at Pitfield, we look forward to building a compelling geological map and database that highlights the strong potential for a major copper-gold discovery.”

At 1131 BST, shares in Empire Metals were down 4.58% at 1.22p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.