SMC Gold to drill again at Cinabrio 09:39, Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Sydney - Wednesday - Oct 19: (RWE Australian Business News) - SMC Gold Ltd (ASX code: SMO) today announced approval for a $US150,000 drilling program at its Cinabrio mine in Chile. The aim of the program is to better define existing inferred resources and further delineate the extent of the Cinabrio ore-body. The two previous drill programs, costing on aggregate $US200,000, lifted the resource from 17,370 tonnes of copper-equivalent to more than 105,000 tonnes of copper-equivalent, as well as confirming the company's geological model through substantiating the existence of three new blocks. This represents a cost of 0.1 of a cent per pound of additional resource. The Cinabrio resource remains open at depth and to the north and south, and the drilling has indicated the potential to more than double the present resource.
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SMC has also identified potential to expand the nearby Dalmacia resource, which will be processed at the expanded Punitaqui processing plant. Further drilling is planned at Dalmacia in 2006 and is expected to increase the resource from the current 2.5 million tonnes at 1.3 per cent copper. The company is driving a short decline (80 metres) into a near-surface ore block. Initial production from the Dalmacia copper resource will start in November at a rate of 200 tonnes of ore a day to allow trial processing to be completed ahead of a decision to commence full-scale mining.
SMO Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
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