3 November 2022
(Thursday, November 3, 2022) American West Metals Limited (American West Metals or the Company) (ASX: AW1) is pleased to provide an update on the diamond drilling program by the Company at the Storm Copper Project (Storm or the Project) on Somerset Island, Nunavut, Canada.
Highlights include:
Dave O’Neill, Managing Director of American West Metals commented:
“Our first drill program at Storm has been a huge success. In a relatively short program, we have intersected extremely high-grade copper near-surface and likely doubled the volume of mineralisation at the 2750N Zone, and discovered a potential large, new sedimentary copper system below the near- surface mineralisation.
“The latest assays for drilling at the 2750N Zone continue to highlight the potential for significant near- surface resources of copper with outstanding upside.
“Strong copper intersections to the west indicate that the zone is open and highly prospective in that direction.
“Outcropping mineralisation with up to 62% copper and surface geochemistry supports our assumptions that the zone has the potential to extend for over 1km to the west.
“The next drill program at Storm will look to define further resources at the 2750N Zone, and to evaluate the economic potential of other highly prospective near surface occurrences of high-grade copper such as the 2200N and 4100N Zones.
“We are excited about the commencement of the next phase of beneficiation test work, designed to confirm the commercial potential of the high-grade Storm copper. Samples of drill core from this year’s program are on the way to Perth, Western Australia, for test work that will aim to define a definitive flowsheet for a potential Direct Shipping Ore mining operation.
“We look forward to reporting on the outcomes of the planning and test work.”
Work will continue to progress the near-surface mine development and exploration/discovery paths for the Storm Project in parallel.
Further diamond drilling is planned to expand the shallow, high-grade 2750N Zone, and to define initial resources at the 4100N and 2200N Zones where shallow high-grade copper mineralisation has also been intersected in historical drilling.
Exploration activities including drilling and geophysics are also planned to follow-up the significant new discovery of sediment hosted style copper mineralisation, which is associated with a large EM anomaly to the west of the previously recognized and highly mineralised 4100N Zone (see our ASX Release dated 23 August 2022 - Major Copper Discovery at Storm). With six EM anomalies similar to that intersected remaining to be tested, there is strong potential for multiple large-scale mineral system to occur at these deeper levels.
Beneficiation and metallurgical test work will soon commence on drill core (ST22-02) from this year’s program. The aim of this work is to create a definitive flow sheet for a direct shipping ore (DSO) operation from the 2750N Zone mineralisation. Previous test work on Storm drill core has produced a
>53% copper DSO product using a full-scale ore sorter and with no further processing or optimisation (see our ASX Release dated 11 April 2022 – Over 53% Cu Direct Shipping Ore Generated at Storm Copper).
Investors can expect further news on the Storm Project as the test work and exploration planning continues.
Read the full release here.