Montezuma Mining Company (ASX: MZM) has in excess of 3,000 km2 of exploration tenure in Western Australia, with multi-commodity prospectivity including gold, copper, nickel and uranium targets.
The company's Butcher Bird Project contains the historic Butcher Bird mine, a high grade near surface copper mine which targeted supergene copper mineralisation. The mine has recorded production of 8.46t of copper at an average grade of 22.6%.
Montezuma Mining Company logs stunning 61m at 1.96% copper intercept from drilling at Butcherbird
Previous and current intersections of continuous copper mineralisation at Butcherbird are starting to reveal the huge copper potential of the project with broad mineralisation that appears to increase in grade at depth.
Montezuma Mining Company (ASX: MZM) is continuing its impressive run of copper hits with strong widths and grade at the Butcherbird Copper Project with the second round of assays from reverse circulation drilling extending the mineralisation and increasing the grade.
The company intersected a total of 61 metres of continuous copper mineralisation at 1.96% copper and 228 parts per million cobalt from 113 metres.
This follows previously announced intercepts of 47 metres at 1.81% copper from 113 metres, which includes a stunning high grade intercept of 6 metres at 6.08% copper and 631 parts per million cobalt.
Managing director Justin Brown commented "It's a fantastic intersection and obviously we’ve only got limited drilling so it’s hard to know how big it’s going to get, but certainly with grades and widths of that sort of tenor it’s pretty exciting."
Importantly, the mineralisation remains open, ending in 0.46% copper. Drilling about 300 metres along strike from the discovery hole returned 83 metres at 0.43% copper from 118 metres including 3 metres at 4.15% copper.
A further boost to the project is the fact that the results for the last 14 metres of the hole were generally of a higher tenor, averaging 2.44% copper, increasing the overall average grade of the discovery intersection.
Several holes testing separate reconnaissance geophysical targets returned no significant copper or cobalt results, however non-copper sulphide minerals may be present and multi element analyses including the platinum group elements are still pending.
Only copper, cobalt and nickel results have been received to date for this latest round of results.
The mineralisation is open along strike and at depth within a greater than 6 kilometre striking corridor.
Previous drilling by Montezuma Mining 130 metres west of the 61 metres at 1.96% copper intersection along this shear zone initially confirmed the presence of copper sulphide mineralisation.
Results included 18 metres at 0.63% copper and 859 parts per million cobalt from 154 metres, and 10 metres at 0.82% copper and 581 parts per million cobalt from 180 metres, including 3 metres at 1.94% copper and 0.12% cobalt.
Montezuma Mining has begun further drilling to confirm the orientation of the zone and to test the depth and strike extent.
Brown told Proactive Investors today the company is in the process of sourcing a larger capacity rig to do some deeper testing because the current rig cannot get to the depths Montezuma Mining is targeting.
"It can only get down to a little over 200 metres so we’d really like to be getting beyond 300 metres because we still haven’t touched the bottom of this thing. It ends in mineralisation even at the depths we got to with that hole," he said.
Once the rig has been secured and mobilised to site, Montezuma Mining is planning an agressive exploration program to test along strike and down dip to assess the size of the deposit.
Butcherbird Potential Revealed Early On
Earlier intersections of 47 metres at 1.81% copper from 113 metres were discovered at the very start of the recent drilling campaign, when assays from just two holes of the 19 hole program had been returned.
Brown said Montezuma Mining is currently reassaying the older drill holes in light of the new results.
