New assays boost copper asset for American West

New assay results suggest American West Metals has nailed a parcel of new mineralisation about 250m from its existing West Desert deposit in Utah, USA. The mixed metal strikes include a 0.92m interval running a serious grade of 20.4 per cent zinc from 459.31m.

The bumper intersect formed part of a broader 4.58m hit going 5.21 per cent zinc from 455.65m that sits amongst a cocktail of anomalous copper, gold, silver and indium mineralisation.

The company says the diamond hole that returned the high-grade result was plunged into a magnetic target that bears a striking geophysical resemblance to the operation’s existing 59 million tonne zinc-copper-indium resource.

American West was listed on the ASX about a year ago and brought with it a handful of North American-based operations, including its West Desert project in Utah’s prolific Sevier Orogenic Belt.

The wholly owned asset boasts a historical and foreign resource in excess of 59 million tonnes and includes a higher-grade 16.5 million tonne core grading 6.3 per cent zinc, 0.3 per cent copper and 33 grams per tonne indium.

The resource was outlined in 2014 by a previous operator and collectively houses over a million tonnes of zinc, 45,000 tonnes of copper and 545 tonnes of indium.

Since listing on the local bourse, the mixed metal explorer has sought to build on the legacy resource and has been actively drilling across a suite of highly prospective targets.

Management says the results will be fed into a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource at West Desert and used to assess the potential of an open pit mining operation at the site.

Additional drilling north of the project’s known deposit also unveiled a high-grade copper lens with an package of molybdenum porphyry mineralisation that the company described as “exceptional”.

Assay results from the zone including over 4m of copper at 3.4 per cent from a depth of about 421m.

The West Desert projects sits about 160 kilometres south-west of Salt Lake City in Utah and is nearby to a handful of world-class copper operations, including Rio Tinto’s Kennecott mine – an asset that has historically churned out more copper than any other.

The company is currently evaluating various development opportunities at West Desert, including one focusing on mining its high-grade core through an open-pit operation before switching to underground mining at depth.

With demand for both copper and zinc expected to double by 2050 on the back of the commodity’s importance to the electric vehicle and battery technology sectors, American West could find itself at the tip of the spear when it comes to supplying a US market ravenous for all things associated with the production of low carbon energy.

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