Auroch Minerals has shifted gear, this week commencing its highly anticipated maiden drill campaign at its exciting Arden base metals project, located about 335km north of Adelaide in S.A.
The program, that will comprise of up to 2,500 metres of RC and diamond drilling, will look to test a number of highly prospective looking zinc, copper and cobalt targets over the 720 square kilometre exploration play.
The project area was previously worked for its base metal mineralisation periodically between 1850 and 1920.
Auroch previously announced some spectacular surface rock chip samples from the Ragless Range, Kanyaka and Radford Creek prospects within the Arden project, creating a sense of anticipation around the maiden drill campaign.
Ragless Range returned highly anomalous zinc results up to 6.97%, whilst Kanyaka produced results up to a very significant 12.4% copper, 2.4% zinc and 0.5% cobalt.
Radford Creek appears to be different again, producing 3.9% lead, 1.7% zinc and 13g/t silver from a trench sample through manganese-rich gossans.
The company believes the Arden project has the potential to host world-class zinc, lead, copper and cobalt stratiform sedimentary exhalative deposits, similar to the revered Mt Isa district in western Queensland.
The sedimentary horizon being targeted at Ragless Range was initially discovered by Kennecott (later the Rio Tinto Group) between 1966 and 1972.
Kennecott identified anomalous “Sedex”-style zinc mineralisation up to 40m wide with the potential for over 10km of strike.
The horizon has been traced for about 4km to date and Auroch is testing a 1.5km section during the current program.
The drilling will test below the limit of oxidation and into the fresh rock, which was never previously evaluated in the earlier Kennecott exploration.
The project area has been off the radar for nearly 4 decades, with regional diamond exploration having been the main focus since 1980.
Auroch Minerals CEO Aidan Platel said: “Our exploration team has done an amazing job to remain on-schedule with our aggressive exploration programme at the Arden Project. The first drill-hole has commenced at the exciting Ragless Range Target, which has great potential for significant Sedex zinc mineralisation.”
It is anticipated that the Arden drilling programme will take approximately 6 weeks to complete, with the company releasing results as they become available.
Auroch is also lining up exploratory drilling at its Bonaventura lead-zinc project on Kangaroo Island in S.A. later this year.
The company’s strategy of selecting under-explored, multi-commodity projects in regions of historical production and prospective geology will come to the fore over the next few months and the drill rig will be the ultimate truth diviner.
