Extremely promising news from Altiplano Metals (TSXV APN / WKN A2JNFG)! CEO Alastair McIntyre’s company has announced that preliminary results from drilling at the historic Santa Beatriz copper and gold mine indicate success.
Altiplano recently began shipping bulk sample material from Santa Beatriz for processing at its nearby El Peñón plant. With a new mine plan, APN expects to increase its throughput with additional mineralized material from the mine, which is located around 13 kms from the plant and 45 kilometers south of La Serena in Chile. To this end, the company had completed four drill holes with a total length of 655.6 meters, which, as has now been reported, confirmed the continuity of the vein over at least 100 meters along strike and around 40 meters down dip below the deepest past production level to date! The average width of the vein was 2.28 meters. At the widest point, it even reached 3 meters.
Top view of the completed DDH, the underground geology of level 416, and the thickness of the veins intersected in each drill hole; Source: Altiplano Metals
In detail, drill hole 25SB-004 intersected 2.9 meters of vein with intervals of up to 60 cm of massive chalcopyrite, a very impressive visual intersection. Drill hole 25SB-002 intersected the vein in a fault zone; however, the lateral continuity of the vein was confirmed with neighboring holes 25SB-001 and 25SB-003. Assay results are pending and are of course eagerly awaited.
Planning can be driven forward!
In any case, the confirmation of the continuity of the vein allows Altiplano to move forward with its plans and potentially develop four more levels for mining mineralized material! Especially as preliminary observations of the drill core confirmed the mineralized zones and showed that alteration minerals of the vein are identical to those of the previously mined Farellon vein.
Drill core from the current program at Santa Beatriz; Source: Altiplano Metals
Another interesting result from the drilling is the observation of potassic alteration with associated magnetite veinlets and traces of molybdenite and chalcopyrite disseminations. This alteration was discovered at deeper previously unexplored levels. This, according to the company, indicates the potential for porphyry copper and greater gold mineralization at depth.
In addition, Altiplano continued, quartz with epidote has been observed in several intercepts in drill hole SB25-002, suggesting an overprint of epithermal gold mineralization. This event could explain the higher gold grades in concentrate from the historical Santa Beatriz sales records. In any case, all drill core is currently being logged and prepared for sampling.
Altiplano CEO McIntyre is also extremely encouraged that the preliminary drill results confirm the continuity of the vein in deeper areas along strike at Santa Beatriz, as this will provide valuable support in planning further development of the mine to access additional mineralized material at greater depth. Mr. McIntyre added that the assay results will not be available for several weeks. The fact that massive copper sulphides are visible in the core, though, confirms that the structure and mineralogy of the Santa Beatriz vein continues below surface and are identical to the Farellon vein, the Altiplano CEO added.
This is good news because, as Mr. McIntyre went on to say, mining at Farellon has shown that the vein has widened at depth and grades have increased. In addition, the occurrence of quartz and epidote would indicate the potential for secondary gold mineralization that could possibly be recovered at the El Peñón site. A promising start then. We are looking forward to the analytical results!
