Time for a thread with a more bullish title. These amazing deposits deserve a better heading than ‘Exploration Update’.
First 4 holes with results to EOH all mineralised to EOH: 44m@54g/t, 24m@45g/t 22m@28g/t Au 26m@15g/t,.
No barren fresh rock encountered yet - lowest grade result 1.6g/t Au!
Mineralisation defined over 1km x 200m and wide open in all directions at 2 massive, very similar extremely high grade gold-silver-PGM deposits.
Widespread DISSEMINATED gold up to 360g/t and silver to 2905g/t plus PGMs at surface in intense hydrothermally altered dolerite and #porphyry. Preliminary results received from 9 of 37 RC and DD holes 100 - 200m apart.
Average grade is 38.5g/t at Tres Estados from results received to date which continues to support the possibility that huge sections of the dolerite are mineralised for kilometres giving us massive porphyry-like tonnages along strike and at depth but at 50 times the grade of a porphyry. A total of ~35km kilometres of strike and 500m – 2km width of prospective dolerite and porphyry.
RC holes were drilled by the side of the road so they were collared in essentially random locations relative to the geology. They haven’t even drilled what they anticipate to be the higher grade ground because the exploration permit wasn’t issued although this has been granted since then.
Drilling results from the 6 holes at Tabocal has tested <1% of the dolerite volume between Daniel and Tabocal workings (5km x 600m) to a depth of 200m (1.8Bt), and that’s ignoring the other 13km of prospective dolerite to the NE and SW. They've tested less than 1% of the prospective dolerite and this isn't the biggest one. Ema is the biggest and there's Juma East which is a bit deep (50m) so we’ll leave that for a few years.
Very high PGM grades as well, e.g. 260kg surface sample of **bro returned 102g/t gold, 62g/t #platinum, 37g/t #palladium and 135g/t silver via a hydrometallurgical process. http://bbxminerals.com.au/tres-estados/
Other important factors include:
•Because the grades are from partial extraction, there is significant upside in the measured grade for the deposit as partial extraction results undercall the true grade;
•Artisanal miners recovering very high grades from supergene gold but cannot extract fresh rock gold;
•Very low productions costs per ounce anticipated due to high grades per tonne;
•Revenue generation from 2t/day pilot plant coming soon;
•Shares very tightly held ~90% of 400M. ~10% free float;
•JORC coming but they need an assay protocol (due soon);
•They’re going to mine anyway, with or without any JORC, feasibility study, etc.;
•No PFS or DFS planned at this stage. The grades are so high in fresh rock at surface that they're going straight into trial mining at up to 100Ktpa;
•the absence of a soil anomaly doesn't mean the dolerite isn't strongly mineralised underneath which renders the whole 3km of dolerite between the Tabocal and Adelar workings prospective, as well as the 7km long northern extension which does exhibit soil anomalism.
BBX is proving up three Giant orebodies (Ema, Tres Estados and Juma East), has a preliminary mining schedule and are busy building a 100+ year gold mining operation.
The fact that BBX's SP is such a bargain is testament to the fact that most punters have got no idea what they're doing.
The **bro and porphyry intrusions are huge (many billions of tonnes). They could be be 5% or 50% mineralised. It needs confirmation by sampling\drilling but so far with ~36 samples received everything is 100% ore!
CONS:
Column 1
Column 2
0
ITEM
RESOLUTION\TIMING
1
No assay technique yet
Appears to be in final optimisation stage. Recently BBX started using the word ‘refinement‘ instead of 'development' when discussing their work on an analytical technique.
2
No JORC resource estimate yet
Will follow from assay technique but might be possible using met. test results. Mining to proceed with or without JORC
3
No pilot plant yet
In final stages of plannning
4
Commercial viability of processing method stated but not demonstrated by BBX yet
Commercial viability will be demonstrated once the pilot plant is up and running. Super high grades nullify non-viability
5
Trial mining permit still not granted
Should happen soon once archaeological study complete
With time all of these issues will be resolved. Personally I am confident that they will all be resolved soon – alluded to in last ANN. Others need more evidence, but they will have to pay a higher price for their shares when that evidence arrives given the tiny free float.
* Intersection intervals not continuous - refer to ANN. Intervals posted deemed reasonable due to the disseminated, widespread nature of the mineralisation hosted in intensely hydrothermally altered dolerite and porphyry. All grades are partial extractions derived from 5kg 2 metre composites used in metallurgical testwork. Assay protocol in development.
They've been getting recovered grades of 299.3g/t (pictured) and 360g/t (10 and 12oz/t) from 5kg samples split off 150kg bulk samples from Tres Estados and Ema. That’s almost $20,000 from one tonne of ore.
EMA
Grades are lower than Tres Estados because it's the first testwork conducted on the porphyry so there's likely to be significant undercall of the grade. Previous results from bulk rock chip sampling up to 297g/t Au
(20min delay)