Empire no longer keen on small open pit at Eclipse

Resource exploration and development company Empire Metals announced a progress update on activities at the Eclipse Gold Project in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia on Wednesday, reporting that it had completed three exploratory drilling programmes.

The AIM-traded firm said the programmes consisted of 111 reverse circulation (RC) drill holes for a total of 9,121 metres, and three diamond drill holes for a total of 201 metres, over the last 12 months.

It said the drilling delivered “encouraging” results that confirmed the existence of several parallel veins in addition to the main Eclipse vein, and indicated that the Eclipse lode itself remained open at depth.

Results from the drilling indicated that gold mineralisation had been remobilised to greater depths, which merited further drilling to test the strike and depth extensions of multiple gold structures for both high-grade primary lodes and supergene enrichment near the base of weathering.

The company said it would also expand the exploration and development focus on the wider potential that was offered by combinations of the Eclipse lode with the Jack's Dream extension and Twin Shaft lode, with the objective of delivering a larger mineralised inventory to advance towards the feasibility stage.

“The results from the company's drilling campaign has provided confidence in the potential of the Eclipse Gold Project whilst continuing to add to our understanding of the nature of the mineralised lodes,” said managing director Shaun Bunn.

“Equipped with these results, we believe that the main gold mineralisation at Eclipse is more prevalent at depth, and is perhaps orders of magnitude larger than originally anticipated.”

Bunn said that as a result, the firm believed that the development of a small-scale open pit operation was not the optimum path for unlocking the value of Eclipse, and could ultimately lead to the sterilisation of the higher-value gold mineralisation within the high-grade primary lodes and supergene enrichment near the base of weathering.

“We will continue to build a resource base around the existing high grade targets, both at depth and along strike, and focus on the wider potential that is offered by combinations of the Eclipse lode with the Jack's Dream extension and the Twin Shaft lode.”

At 1114 BST, shares in Empire Metals were down 20% at 1.6p.