American West Metals has locked in drill contractors and will mobilise to its West Desert critical minerals project in Utah this month, setting up what management says will be the biggest work program at the asset since the maiden mineral resource was delivered in 2023.
The opening phase will see up to 5,000 metres of diamond drilling put down, aimed at expanding the existing mineral resource and testing several strategic areas across the tenure that remain underexplored.
The new campaign is being built around three shots on goal: follow-up of high-grade indium-rich skarns in the near-mine “Goldilocks Zone”, conduct the first gallium-focused drilling along the project’s Juab Fault and drill test large magnetic and gravity anomalies with signatures similar to the company’s existing West Desert deposit.
American West managing director Dave O’Neil said: “High-grade indium, copper, silver, gold, and gallium mineralisation has been discovered outside of the current West Desert resource by drilling, and we will look to significantly expand these zones of sought-after metals.”
At Goldilocks, earlier sampling confirmed grades up to 324 grams per tonne (g/t) indium, 4.9 per cent copper, 155g/t silver and 5.4g/t gold in skarns that sit outside the current resource model.
Recent drilling at the project included hits such as 17.22m grading 1.04 per cent copper, 0.58g/t gold and 12.46g/t indium from 325.21 metres. A higher-grade slice included 3.5m at a solid 3.8 per cent copper, 0.8g/t gold, 98.9g/t silver, 18.8g/t indium and 67.7g/t gallium from 421.2m.
Historical drilling outside the resource included 5.5m at 1.4 per cent copper, 3.8g/t gold, 22.2g/t silver and 64.4g/t indium from 600.91m. Management has also flagged a 1.1m gold vein grading an impressive 12.43g/t gold from 510.97m as evidence of a late-stage gold overprint.
In addition to the drill program, the company also plans to sample large volumes of mine waste from three historical zinc-silver-lead mines on its wholly owned patented claims adjacent to the deposit – Utah, Emma and Galena – which operated between 1890 and 1953. Management says the waste may contain critical metals not recovered during historical processing, including gallium, indium, and antimony.
Rounding off the exploration program, American West says 2026 will deliver the first-ever gallium-focused drilling along the Juab Fault in a geological setting it says is similar to Utah’s Apex gallium–germanium mine.
From 1985 through the early 1990s, the Apex mine produced germanium and gallium from material left behind by earlier copper-lead-silver mining.
Widely considered to be the world’s first mine, operating primarily for gallium and germanium, both metals were left behind at the end of mining campaigns for silver, lead and copper.
Gallium is used in compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide and gallium nitride for LEDs, laser diodes and power and radio-frequency devices.
West Desert already carries a JORC resource of 33.7 million tonnes at 3.83 per cent zinc, 0.15 per cent copper and 9.08 grams per tonne silver. The project also hosts 33.7 million tonnes grading 20.01g/t for 23.76 million ounces of indium, which the company describes as the largest resource of its type in the United States.
Geophysics is the third lever pulling this story together. American West says the deposit sits squarely within a strong magnetic response backed up by a coincident gravity anomaly, first unlocked by drilling on the western edge of a magnetic feature that stretches for more than 5.6 kilometres across the project.
Crucially, most of that geophysical corridor remains completely untested, leaving plenty of blue-sky running room. A project-wide gravity survey has identified multiple anomalies comparable in scale and response to the deposit.
American West finished the December quarter with $6.776 million in cash and cash equivalents.
West Desert now has a defined resource, a near-mine indium upgrade target in Goldilocks, a potentially fault-controlled gallium ambition with a potential analogue to Apex and a long magnetic trend still waiting to see the drill bit.
If the upcoming 5,000m program converts those skarn hits into resource tonnes, the next update should be heavy on numbers rather than adjectives.
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By Matt Birney
