A West Australian-based junior with a decades-long track record in the field is continuing to return some mouth-watering drilling results in what is arguably the country’s premier copper producing district.
At the start of March, Helix Resources Ltd (ASX:HLX) announced testing of the Upper Canbelego Main Lode – a part of its Canbelego project south-east of Cobar in central New South Wales ‒ with a “modest” RC program successfully mapping out a high grade zone from near surface to over 120 metres down-dip.
Meanwhile, copper sulphides observed around 22m downhole in diamond drill core appeared to have further extended that trend by 40m – plus it remained open at depth.
Initial estimates of the true thickness of these mineralised zones, the company said, were between 15 to 20m.
Furthermore, additional potential was highlighted by a very shallow, high grade intercept of 25m at 1.87 per cent copper, which included 5m at 5.35 per cent and 2m at 6.42 per cent. This remained 130m open to the south.
As it stands, deeper diamond drilling to test high grade copper shoots identified by downhole electromagnetic (DHEM) surveys is ongoing, and Helix’s objective now is to follow up on the 14m intercept of copper sulphides from the first successful drill test of the conductive DHEM targets.
Located along the regional-scale Rochford copper trend some 45 kilometres south east of Cobar, and 5km south of the historic Mt Boppy mine, Canbelego potentially could be a Cobar-style copper deposit analogous to the large-scale, high grade mineralisation found at the nearby CSA operation, which is currently owned by Glencore, but is under offer from Metals Acquisition Corporation for a reported US$1.1 billion.
The project is a 70:30 joint venture, with Aeris Resources Ltd being the 30 per cent partner and Helix (as manager) holding the remaining stake.
Canbelego currently has an inferred mineral resource (compliant with the 2004 JORC Code) of 1.5 million tonnes at 1.2 per cent copper. This 2010 estimate was based on 39 holes for 8080 metres of RC and diamond drill core.
During Vertical Events’ recent RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle, Helix boss Mike Rosenstreich said the junior held two large tenement areas “overlying key mineralised structures”.
This involved three major regional-scale copper trends – Rochford (30 km), Collerina (80 km, and host of Helix’s wholly-owned Central “CZ” Zone mineral resource) as well as Meryula (25 km of fledgling copper and lead/zinc targets).
“For an early stage exploration company we are very well funded – we have $8.6 million cash and we are deploying that cash on a 2000 square kilometre large strategic land position, which contains two advanced projects with mineral resources,” Rosenstreich said during his presentation.
“We’ve raised over $20 million in the last two years and that enables us to undertake both regional exploration and advanced project exploration.
“The exploration model that we are chasing (at Canbelego) is Cobar-style mineralisation – small surface footprint, great vertical extent, often parallel repeat lodes and, importantly, high grade.”
Rosenstreich said when Helix decided to drill beneath the Canbelego main lode’s 2010, 200m-deep, inferred mineral resource to a depth of 400m, the rig returned a copper intercept of 18m at 3.4 per cent, including 14m at 4.2 per cent.
“We didn’t even have to announce the assay ‒ we just had to show a photograph of the core, and our share price went from one to five cents,” he noted.
“That’s the kind of leverage that exploration success in a junior gives investors.”
As for Helix’s second major target, CZ, it has a copper resource of 7 Mt grading 2 per cent.
“The mineralisation here is basically a plunging shoot, but with some very high grade copper sulphides along it, as well as some oxide material near the surface,” Rosenstreich noted.
