Solid strikes boost American West copper play

ASX-listed American West Metals could be riding a winner after recent drilling at its West Desert project in Utah delivered a solid set of copper, gold, zinc and silver-laced assays that continue to illustrate the project’s potential scale.

The company is in the midst of a resource upgrade and says the significant volumes of copper and gold intersected in its latest play bode well for its campaign given the mineralisation sits outside its current resource model.

According to American West, some of the better copper results from the single hole plunged include 1.83m at 4.12 per cent copper from 363.61m inside of a larger 3.05m section grading 2.58 per cent from 362.39m.

One of the longer copper strikes ran 17.22m at 1.04 per cent from 325.21m.

Some of the notable zinc and silver hits include 6.34m grading 10.71 per cent zinc and 4.3 grams per tonne silver from 561.87m with a higher-grade 3.44m component going 14.06 per cent zinc and 6.2 g/t silver from 564.77m.

Interestingly, the 739.7m hole was also speckled with anomalous gold and indium hits across multiple levels, potentially setting up a lucrative multi-commodity play.

According to the company, the probe was aimed at evaluating the continuity of a patch of mineralisation around the western rim of the West Desert deposit’s main zone along with a deeper area of the deposit.

The hole proved successful in intersecting a suite of broad, massive and semi-massive zinc and copper sulphide partitions that will be fed into ongoing geological and resource modelling programs.

American West says most of the intense copper and sulphide dominant mineralisation was found in an area outside of its current copper resource envelope, further underlining West Desert’s development potential.

It says slicing and sampling of the drill core from its latest campaign has already been completed and it is not awaiting assay results from a trio of additional holes. American West expects the results of the three to start trickling in over the next few weeks.

Two of the three supplementary holes targeted extensions to the higher-grade copper mineralisation beyond the West Desert deposit and interestingly, both struck visual skarn and porphyry-related mineralisation.

American West says this type of geological relationship is common within significant porphyry-related mineral systems in the district including Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon open-pit copper project about 120km away.

The company’s West Desert operation has a premier postcode in Utah’s Sevier Orogenic Belt that houses the productive Tintic Mining district, about 160km south-west of Salt Lake City. The operation takes in more than 300 acres of private land, 336 unpatented mining claims and a single state mineral lease tallying up to about 32 square kilometres of ground.

Interestingly, the deposit has a historical resource of more than 59 million tonnes, including a 16.5 million-tonne high-grade core that runs 6.3 per cent zinc, 0.3 per cent copper and 33 grams per tonne indium.

With American West seemingly onto a high-growth deposit, the company may be set to add to the historical figures and carve out its own slice of the lucrative copper pie.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au