Significant copper-antimony assays from Aruma Resources’ Fiery Creek project near Mount Isa in Queensland have sent the company’s share price flying on the back of its biggest-ever intraday trading volumes since its 2010 listing.
Management revealed this morning that a surface sampling program at the project has revealed high-grade copper assays alongside significant grades of up to 1 per cent antimony, which is currently a hot commodity on the ASX.
And the market reacted immediately, pumping Aruma’s share price from a close yesterday of 1.6c to touch a high of 4.7c – a jump of almost 194 per cent. Nearly 110 million shares were traded, representing about half of the company’s 222.06 million units on issue.
The latest results from Aruma’s Piper prospect include impressive grabs of 11.53 per cent copper and 1.1 per cent antimony, in addition to 18.8 grams per tonne silver and 0.3 per cent zinc from one sample. Other samples included high-grade copper running 11.83 per cent with 17.7g/t silver and another at 9.95 per cent copper with a project high 31.3g/t silver.
Management says the samples have outlined a copper corridor covering more than 600m of strike at the Piper prospect. However, it says data generated from soil sampling indicates strong copper anomalism across the broader Fiery Creek area beyond the initial Piper and Fiery Creek targets.
The auspicious grades of the surging antimony metal is a timely bonus for the company as recent demand has the commodity’s price sitting at near all-time highs of US$24,000 (AU$36,100) per tonne. The price surge has come on the back of China making strategic moves to safeguard its reserves of antimony – a critical mineral used extensively in solar panels, military applications and electronics – given its reduced domestic production in recent years.
The company believes the under-explored Fiery Creek project displays geological features favourable for copper-antimony deposits and is an exploration priority. It is now planning detailed ground gravity surveys to better define drill targets for a campaign expected to kick off this month, which will be followed by an IP survey at the Piper prospect that is planned for October.
Aruma Resources managing director Glenn Grayson said: “These results, in conjunction with historic exploration results, help provide key base-line data for our next phase of fieldwork. Ground-based geophysical surveys are planned in the coming weeks, with the aim of defining targets for a maiden drilling program.”
The company’s Bortala and adjacent Fiery Creek projects sit 10km and 25km north, respectively, from Glencore’s world-class Mount Isa copper-zinc operation in northern Queensland. It is Australia’s second-biggest copper producer and has one of the largest zinc resource bases in the world.
Both Queensland projects sit within the Mount Isa copper belt and are considered by Aruma as relatively unexplored. The impressive copper hits at Piper to the north occur within the Lady Loretta formation discovered by Mount Isa Mines in 1994.
Substantial amounts of surface cover in the north had rendered previous surface sampling largely ineffective.
The initial high-grade copper in the area was identified across an outcropping quartz breccia that was mapped for 700m. The company believes it highlights prospectivity for further structural copper traps in the area underneath the cover.
Other global tier-one mining houses such as Rio Tinto, Anglo American and Teck Resources have all been increasing their substantial exploration tenure in the region, pointing to the prospectivity of the ground.
With strategic copper and antimony resources making global waves, it seems Aruma has more than piqued the market’s interest with its dual-commodity potential in Queensland.
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By Andrew Todd
