Aston Bay Confirms Large, Deep-seated System with up to 3.7% Copper at Storm

The success story at the Storm copper project on Somerset Island in the Canadian province of Nunavut continues. Together with its partner American West Metals, Aston Bay Holdings (TSX.V: BAY, FSE: 6AY, WKN: A2AUUP) is tracking down a large copper system in the deeper layers. It contains up to 3.7% copper.

The drilling confirms the lateral extent of the copper system at Storm at depth, highlighting the potential of the ‘Deep Copper Horizon’, which was already thought to host large-scale, layered, high-grade copper deposits.

Drill hole ST24-01 has now been evaluated. It was drilled in the Central Trench area and intersected a ten-metre section of average copper mineralisation of 1.2% at a depth of 311 metres. From 315 metres downhole, the copper content increased to 2.2% over three metres and to 3.7% over 0.5 metres.

A second diamond drill hole, ST24-02, also encountered the deeper zones of the deposits. It was drilled approximately 1,500 metres south of ST24-01 and intersected visible copper sulphide at 99.2 metres downhole. Exact results from this hole are expected in the coming week.

The new system may represent the southern continuation of mineralisation already identified elsewhere.

The first deep hole of this year’s drilling programme has already proved to be a great success, as the type of copper mineralisation intersected and its stratigraphic position are similar to those at Cyclone. It is suspected that the new finds represent the faulted southern part of this deposit. If this assumption proves correct, the current find could make a significant contribution to the future resource.

Thomas Ulrich, CEO of Aston Bay Holdings, noted that each deep hole has encountered copper mineralisation at roughly the same depth, and that this helps to deepen the geological understanding in order to identify further thicker and higher-grade intersections in this very large and promising horizon in the future.

Plan view of Storm with latest drill holes; Source Aston Bay Holdings

Again and again, copper is encountered at the same depths

The horizon intersected in diamond drill hole ST24-01 is the same interpreted mineralised stratigraphic horizon that hosts the Cyclone deposit at shallow depths to the north of the North Graben fault. Significantly, the drill hole intersected copper mineralisation at the same depth as encountered in every other widely spaced drill hole within the large Central Graben.

The consistency of the copper mineralisation in this horizon underlines the laterally extensive and probably stacked nature of the deep copper system, which now covers an area of over 10 km². It has also confirmed the great similarity to the large-scale and high-grade copper deposits known from the Central African copper belt.

These findings fuel the hope that Aston Bay Holdings and American West are on the trail of a very large contiguous horizon. If future drilling confirms these assumptions, the two partners on Storm would have the chance to prove an exceptionally large copper resource.