Strategic Minerals begins trenching programme west of Redmoor

Strategic Minerals announced on Tuesday that its wholly-owned subsidiary Cornwall Resources (CRL) is starting a trenching and auger exploration programme to investigate the possible presence of extensions of mineralisation up to 1,000 metres to the west of the already-established Redmoor resource.

The AIM-traded firm said multiple prospective targets for tin and copper had been identified in a review of historic exploration data to the west of the Redmoor deposit.

Historic drill intercepts reported up to 1.26% tin over 2.55 metres in core, and 0.23% tin in percussion samples.

It added that “significant” soil anomalies featured values of up to 1,500 parts per million of tin and 630 parts per million of copper.

The anomalies had a similar trend to known mineralisation further east.

Strategic Minerals said CRL would implement a low-cost combined trench and powered-auger sampling programme, to assess the potential of those anomalies as targets for future reconnaissance drilling.

“From our advanced understanding of the geology of the region, we consider it likely that the western potential of Redmoor extends farther away from the granite intrusions which drove the mineralisation in the area,” said Peter Wale, executive director of Strategic Minerals and director of CRL.

“As such, the mineralisation is likely to be richer in those metals that are typically distributed more distally from the source, such as tin and copper.”

Wale described Redmoor as a “world-class” undeveloped deposit with a JORC-compliant inferred resource of 11.7 million tonnes at 1.17% tin equivalent, and was understood to remain open at depth and along strike.

“The proposed work programme is designed to increase our confidence in the strike continuity of the main Redmoor system, to investigate a number of separate tin and copper lode-style targets, and to act as a precursor to further work associated with the recent Deep Digital Cornwall grant.

“Accordingly, the proposed western trenching and auger exercise represents a cost-effective programme as a first step in assessing the wider potential for tin and copper at Redmoor.”

At 1226 GMT, shares in Strategic Minerals were down 9.73% at 0.51p.