Inaugural drilling to commence at Alien Metals’ Elizabeth Hill

Highlights

• Alien has mobilised a diamond drill rig to commence its inaugural drilling programme at the Elizabeth Hill Silver Project.
• 7 diamond core holes for a planned total of 650 m designed to test for extensions to the known mineralisation both along strike and at depth and to complete initial verification work (QA/QC) on historical drilling.
• The programme also aims to test for a much larger mineralised system the company believes is present.
• Historical drilling intersected incredibly high-grade zones with numerous intersections over 10 000 g/t silver (Ag) and a peak assay of 34 300 g/t Ag (3.4% Ag).
• Elizabeth Hill was mined between 1998 and 2000 producing 1 170 000 oz of silver from just 16 800 t of ore, equating to a grade of around 2195 g/t Ag. Mining ceased in 2000 due to the silver price falling below US$5/oz, which compares to the current spot price of approximately US$25/oz.
• The mine also produced Australia's largest silver nugget, the Karratha Queen, that weighed in at 145 kg (4677 oz) which is now on display in the Perth Mint.

This inaugural drilling programme is designed to test some of the historic drilling undertaken over 20 years ago for quality control (QA/QC) purposes, but also and as importantly, to test the company's belief that the historical silver orebody forms part of a much larger and widespread mineralised system. Historically, the vast majority of holes were very poorly sampled and assayed with the majority only being assayed for silver. Numerous references of disseminated sulphides were made in the geological logging but never fully followed up along with several significant anomalies of copper, nickel and PGEs. Alien will carry out a full suite analysis on all relevant drill core to get a more detailed understanding of the potential of the Elizabeth Hill orebody and its envelope.

The company looks forward to updating the market as drilling progresses.

Bill Brodie Good, CEO and Technical Director of Alien Metals, commented: “We have completed a considerable amount of research reviewing over 20 years of historical data on this project area, combined with the recent work by Southern Geoscience and our other technical consultants. We are very excited to be commencing our inaugural drilling programme, which we feel will add significant understanding to the known silver mineralisation, as well as targeting what we believe to be an even larger mineralised system that the silver orebody sits within.

“The West Pilbara is now recognised as a world class mineral province with the potential to discover a major new significant nickel, copper and PGE hosting system in and around Elizabeth Hill, similar to the recently discovered VC7 and Andover nickel-cobalt discoveries along with the known, but still to be fully defined, Carlow Castle, Radio Hill and Mt Sholl precious and base metals discoveries.

“The company believes that a number of targets were never fully followed up on, hence this initial 7 hole programme will focus on the historic orebody and its immediate surroundings. The focus of the programme is the production of the highest quality core from the main zones within the orebody to enable us to better understand the orebody and develop next stage work.”

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/exploration-development/04082021/inaugural-drilling-to-commence-at-alien-metals-elizabeth-hill/