Ann: Outstanding Shallow High-Grade Copper-Gold Discovery, page-181

Stavely shares soar 260% on spectacular Victorian copper-gold find

BARRY FITZGERALD

Independent Journalist

FOLLOW

Plus, Red 5 poised for promotion to the next league of ASX gold producers. And Macquarie sees short-term bullish catalysts for commodities.

Stavely Minerals (ASX:SVY) has added a stunning second leg to its big-time copper hunt in the shadows of the Grampian Ranges in western Victoria, with the first hole in a new shallow-focussed drilling program assaying up to 40% copper.

The spectacular hit was made at the Thursday’s Gossan prospect, with the diamond drill hole specifically targeting shallow and structurally controlled mineralisation within the Ultramafic Contact Fault (UCF).

The results sent Stavely shares through the roof yesterday. The stock soared from 24c to a high of 93c before closing 258per cent higher on the day at 86c, giving the company a market capitalisation of $160 million.

The drill hole returned a 32m intersection which assayed 5.88% copper, 1g/t gold and 58g/t silver from 62m down-hole, including 12m at 14.3% copper, 2.26g/t gold and 145g/t silver, and 2m at 40% copper, 3g/t gold and 517g/t silver.

Oh, there was also a slightly deeper mad ass intersection of 4.4m from 96.7m which assayed 3.98% nickel and 0.23% cobalt.

“Rounding out today’s wrap on the porphyry hunters is Stavely Minerals (ASX:SVY), trading at 22c. It is methodically zeroing in on the hot part of the porphyry system at its Mt Stavely project in western Victoria and has just notched up a shallow lode-style mineralisation hit to the south-east at its Thursday’s Gossan project.” – Barry FitzGerald giving investors the Stavely heads-up on Livewire two weeks ago

The first up success in the shallow program firmly implants the Stavely project among Australia’s growing list of copper exploration hotspots.

Other recent successes include Winu (Rio Tinto) and Havieron (Newcrest/Greatland) in WA’s Paterson province, Oak Dam (BHP) on the Stuart Shelf in South Australia, and Boda (Alkane) in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt.

They are all very different and all have a long way to go before impressive drill bit hits are converted into mining propositions.

If there is a difference to note, it is the leverage of the companies to their finds. Stavely – which was a 24c stock for a market cap of $44m ahead of the discovery hole being announced – wins hands down on that score, followed by Alkane and the London-listed Greatland.

Thursday’s Gossan (it is home to a historic low-grade 110,000t copper supergene resource at surface) is to the south-east of the deep drilling program at the broader Stavely copper-gold project area where the company has spent close to five years looking for the juicy core of a big porphyry copper-gold system.

The shallow drilling within the UFC comes as Stavely pauses the deep porphyry program to review the ton of data collected from recent drilling to better inform future drilling to “vector” in to a juicy porphyry source.

Stavely’s executive chairman and veteran geologist Chris Cairns made the very true observation that it was not every day that an explorer comes across 40% copper hits, with significant gold and silver values as well.

Importantly, Cairns noted that a follow up hole 160m to the south-west of the discovery hole has also intersected a thick zone of structurally controlled semi-massive to massive sulphide mineralisation.

“We are eagerly awaiting assays from that hole and results from further step-out drilling which is currently in progress,” he said.

Cairns said the new shallow and structurally controlled model had clearly expanded the “search space” at the project.

He said number of previous shallow historical air-core and RC intercepts of massive sulphides are now seen to be much more significant than previously thought, making them high-priority targets for diamond drill testing.

“Additional mineralised structures are thought to exist without surface expression but are expected to provide a strong conductive response to a ground EM survey which is being designed, also as a priority.”