Soil Sampling Confirms Luanshya Potential
Australia’s Castillo Copper Limited (ASX: CCZ) has identified a sizeable new anomalous area along a 6km strike length through copper-focused soil sampling exercise at the Luanshya project in Zambia.
Managing Director, Simon Paull, said the company’s in-country geology team has progressed a systematic soil sampling campaign at the Luanshya project, which followed on from earlier desktop work and a two-day site visit. So far, 913 data points have been collected from a NE-SW grid with lines spaced 500m part and samples at 100m.
Field analysis, using a using a portable Innovx XRF analyser, identified a sizeable well-defined NW-SE trending anomalous area, with 6km strike length. Moreover, 15 samples returned copper values >200pm at surface.
“From our earlier understanding of the Luanshya project, which is located in the Zambian Copperbelt, we were expecting to find surface mineralisation aligned with the NW- SE trendline,” Mr Paull said.
“However, defining a sizeable anomalous zone along a 6km strike well exceeded the Board’s expectations.
“The next phase of the exploration campaign for the Mkushi and Luanshya projects comprises ground geophysics surveys which should enable the geology team to formulate test-drill targets,” Mr Paull said.
The geology team, who are still at site finishing up mapping key targets for a planned geophysics survey, observed there was no evidence of previous exploration work within the anomalous zone.
Castillo’s London based Director, Ged Hall, said that given its close proximity to operating copper mines, the Luanshya project is readily accessible and near to existing mining / transportation infrastructure.
“It’s extremely encouraging to see that comprehensive soil sampling campaigns to the Mkushi and Luanshya projects have delivered significant anomalous areas for copper mineralisation,” Mr Hall said.
“We are now clearly on the path to transforming CCZ into a mid-tier copper group.” Mr Paull said with anomalous zones identified at the Mkushi and Luanshya projects, the next steps wiil be to conduct geophysics survey, reconcile the results with geochemical findings, then formulate test-drill targets.
Zambia is one of three pillars that Castillo Copper is progressing in its aim to become a mid-tier copper producer with the others being Mt Oxide in Queensland and Cangai in northern NSW.
