Native Mineral Resources will focus exploration on its core Music Well gold project in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia and its Palmerville copper project in north Queensland after divesting its non-core Mt Morgan copper-gold project south of Rockhampton in Queensland to ASX-listed GBM Resources. The two core projects have been delivering bumper grade samples including 129 grams per tonne gold at Music Well.
The spin-out of Mt Morgan is consistent with the company’s endeavours to fast-track exploration at Music Well and Palmerville, according to management.
Recent sampling from an outcropping quartz vein at the 100 per cent owned Music Well covering 290 square kilometres north of Leonora has returned multiple eye-catching results and visible gold.
The company says 28 crushed rock samples taken from up to 1m into the quartz vein returned gold grades above 1 g/t with 10 samples going at more than 10 g/t.
All 128 samples taken from the vein carried an average 3.16 g/t gold.
The results add to previous sampling that returned high-grade gold at surface including 100 g/t gold, 45.84 g/t gold and 15.02 g/t gold.
At the wholly-owned Palmerville, 200km north of Cairns, the company has identified 65 occurrences of mineralisation with 11 priority targets at the whopping 1,800 square kilometre tenure.
Recent sampling at the Glenroy prospect returned anomalous copper ranging from 0.96 per cent copper up to a head-turning 19.99 per cent copper and 32 g/t silver.
Glenroy lies on the same magnetic anomaly that hosts Native Minerals’ Leane’s prospect in the central part of its landholdings.
Leane’s is said to be the company’s priority copper target at Palmerville with mineralisation identified over some 1,200m of strike.
Historical drilling at Leane’s returned solid hits including 28m going 0.55 per cent copper, 4m at 0.55 per cent copper and 11m at 0.32 per cent copper.
Recent sampling at Leane’s include 2.49 per cent copper, 2.85 per cent copper and an impressive 10.06 per cent copper with 7.8 g/t silver.
At the Fairlight prospect to the north of Leane’s more high-grade copper was identified near historical workings, with six samples returning over 2 per cent copper.
Native Mineral Resources Managing Director Blake Cannavo said:“As recently reported, we are seeing tremendous potential for Music Well to host significant gold mineralisation and we are embarking on an aggressive program to unlock this potential. Our Palmerville project in north Queensland is also shaping as an exciting copper project and we are committed to deploying our resources towards undertaking the next phase of exploration at these projects over the coming months.”
The company plans to drill at both projects this year with drill-testing of the high-grade gold vein at Music Well tabled for late July.
Under the terms of the divestment GBM is set to acquire 100 per cent of Mt Morgan by issuing $200,000 worth of shares to Native Mineral Resources, subject to renewal of the Mt Morgan tenure.
A $35,000 deposit valid for 12 months is due to within two days of entering the agreement.
The Mt Morgan tenement consists of 13 sub-blocks over four non-contiguous areas in the vicinity of a historical copper-gold mine of the same name.
The mine produced some 50 million tonnes at 0.7 per cent copper and 4.7 g/t gold between 1882 and 1981.
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By Matt Birney
