Waratah Minerals moves Spur drilling into fast lane with third rig

Waratah Minerals is accelerating exploration at its Spur gold-copper project in NSW with the mobilisation of a third drill rig.

Waratah Minerals is speeding up drilling at its Spur gold-copper project. Pic: Getty Images

Special Report: Waratah Minerals has mobilised a third rig to accelerate step-out drilling as it seeks to rapidly grow resources at Spur gold-copper project in NSW’s famed Lachlan Fold Belt.

• Waratah Minerals mobilises third drill rig to accelerate step-out drilling at Spur gold-copper project
• Exploration focused on Breccia West prospect where drilling has intersected two porphyry copper-gold zones
• Drilling of third well currently underway to test high-priority magnetic anomaly

It follows the company raising $8.4m through a placement of shares at 27.5c each to institutional, sophisticated and professional investors to accelerate exploration at Spur.

Waratah Minerals’ (ASX:WTM) Spur project is in the Macquarie Arc of the Lachlan Fold Belt, which hosts world-class gold-copper mines such as nearby Cadia along with high value, gold-rich porphyry and epithermal deposits.

It is surrounded by recent investments by gold majors such as Newmont, AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields. 

Exploration at Spur has defined a zone of widespread epithermal sulphide stringer/lode mineralisation and porphyry alteration, which is interpreted to be similar to the upper levels of a broader porphyry system as seen at major East Lachlan deposits such as the 9.6Moz Cowal and 6.4Moz Boda projects.

Third diamond drill rig mobilising to the Breccia West prospect. Pic: Waratah Minerals

Breccia West

High-resolution ground magnetic data at the Breccia West prospect has revised the position of the western margin of the main intrusive complex, defining a new priority search space and upgrading the significance of an historical intercept of 108m grading 0.52% copper and 0.22g/t gold from surface to end of hole.

This revised interpretation opened up a 2km-long priority search space, along the western margin of the main Intrusive Complex, supported by wide zones of porphyry pathfinder geochemistry and alteration at Dalcoath.

Recent diamond drilling at the Breccia West prospect intersected two zones of porphyry copper-gold mineralisation.

One of the zones is associated with potassic altered magmatic-hydrothermal breccia while the second is associated with strong magnetite alteration - porphyry veining hosted within basaltic volcaniclastic/volcanics at the western contact of the main intrusive complex.

Given the strong association of magnetite veining and alteration with porphyry mineralisation at Breccia West, the prospectivity of a magnetic anomaly immediately south of the recent drilling has been upgraded.

This is now the subject of a third diamond hole that is currently underway.

This article was developed in collaboration with Waratah Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing. 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.