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Pan Asia jags high-grade copper rock chips at Chilean project
Brought to you by BULLS N’ BEARS
Rock chip samples have turned up huge copper grades as high as 8.9 per cent across a broad area of mineralisation from the latest field work done at Pan Asia Metals’ Rosario copper project in the Central copper belt, 120km east of the port city of Chanaral in northern Chile.
More than 33 per cent of the rock chips averaged 3.15 per cent copper using a 750 parts per million (ppm) cutoff grade, while higher than 50 per cent averaged 2.06 per cent with a cutoff grade of 100ppm.
Rock chip samples at the Solana prospect, part of Pan Asia Metals’ Rosario copper project in Chile, registered values of up to 8.9 per cent copper.
In total, 316 samples were taken at the project following three north-south structurally trending zones, dubbed Rosario West, Central and East.
Of those, 100 rock chips samples were collected from outcrops and man-made features such as road cuttings, old mine dumps and drill spoil with the best outcrops being found near old mines, prospecting pits, excavations and natural slope breaks.
‘With grades up to 8.9% copper (Cu) and 33/100 averaging 3.15% Cu with a 0.75% Cu cutoff, the rock chip results are compelling and support the work conducted by previous explorers.’
Pan Asia Metals’ managing director Paul Lock
Pan Asia Metals’ managing director Paul Lock commented: “With grades up to 8.9% copper (Cu) and 33/100 averaging 3.15% Cu with a 0.75% Cu cutoff, the rock chip results are compelling and support the work conducted by previous explorers. The program yielded many rock chip samples with elevated copper values inherently associated with observed green (malachite) and blue (chrysocolla) secondary copper minerals as well as local copper sulphides.”
At the Rosario East Trend, 35 rock chip samples taken at the site averaged copper grades of 1.67 per cent copper and peaked at 5.89 per cent with silver grades of 50ppm.
The company also conducted a systematic soil geochemical program, taking 216 samples with results confirming a broad 4km by 1km north-south mineralised zone grading between 150ppm and 2000ppm copper.
To the west at the Rosario Central and Western Trends, the strike direction of old workings at the Lucia, Solana, Elodia and Catalina prospects tend to crosscut the overall trends and show up as sheared volcanic fractures or area where fracturing has allowed for fluid movement from below.
The surface rocks at Lucia contained plentiful green malachite and some chalcocite copper sulphides yielding sample averages of 2.17 per cent copper, with the highest reaching 5.35 per cent copper.
At the Solana prospect, 1km north of Lucia, old workings are evident across a 500m strike length, with 11 of the 14 samples taken demonstrating remarkable potential, averaging 3.44 per cent copper and peaking at grades of 8.89 per cent.
Although not as impressive as the Solana prospect, The Catolina prospect, on the northern boundary of Pan Asia’s grounds, returned 10 samples averaging 1.29 per cent copper with the highest values of 3.35 per cent.
In contrast, preliminary results from the Elodia prospect were less encouraging, but further analysis is planned.
When the data from the field program has been crunched, the company will be able to pinpoint drill targets ahead of a planned 2000m reverse circulation drilling campaign slated for early next year.
In a pre-emptive move, Pan Asia recently trebled its acreage at Rosario to expand its exploration potential and capture prospective northern strike extensions to the Solana and Lucia prospects in the Rosario Central and West Trends.
The company also locked away additional leases, including a corridor adjacent to Chile’s north-south energy grid and a 9 square kilometre flat zone suitable for solar installations, in what may be a tell-tale sign of how confident the company is about the project’s potential.
Rosario is showing all the early signs of being a Manto-style copper-silver deposit, a form of mineralisation known for significant copper deposits in the region.
A good example of such a deposit is the massive State-owned El Salvador mine, just 10km to the south of Pan Asia’s project, which has a resource of 4.7 million tonnes of contained copper grading 0.59 per cent.
As the crow flies, the project is also 100km from the El Salado copper ore processing plant and just 40km north of Codelco’s Porterillos copper smelter.
This is vital to the project’s future.
Until Rosario proves itself to be big enough for a standalone operation, its proximity to these operations opens up a lower capital investment opportunity to initially produce a concentrate that could be hauled to a third-party processing facility.
The latest results combined with recent pre-emptive moves to lock up more land would appear to suggest the company is becoming increasingly confident of finding a sizeable deposit at Rosario.
With copper prices hovering just below US$10,000 (A$15,540) per tonne and global supply starting to diminish against the rising demand from green technologies, any big new copper discovery right now would likely be jumped on by a global mining company.
Pan Asia will be hoping to be that company and Rosario, that discovery.
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