NT Minerals (ASX:NTM) reports that regional 500m-spaced soil sampling and limited infill sampling remain ongoing at Redbank Copper Project over the final 6-8 weeks of the season to define priority targets.
The company notes that anomalous multielement regional soil sampling was completed in 2021 at Wollogorang South over prospective, lower stratigraphic units of the Tawallah Group above the basal unit of the Westmoreland Conglomerate.
Further infill and extension soil sampling will cover more of the McDermott Formation, considered to be the first reductant horizon above the Westmoreland Conglomerate but still stratigraphically beneath the Redbank breccia pipes.
At Copperado in the north, NT Minerals reports historical stream and soil sampling successfully identified copper mineralisation in 2008/2009. Extension of existing regional 500m-spaced soil sampling is underway to investigate anomalous stream catchments, prospective Tawallah Group stratigraphy, and potential regional mineralising pathways.
Historically the Redbank district has undergone detailed surface sampling. Before 2020 however, there has been very little multi-element analysis of surface sampling at Redbank.
Modern analytical techniques and software has advanced significantly in recent years to enable complete digests, lower detection limits and data processing to identify more sophisticated geochemical footprints of mineralising systems.
Since 2020 the company has been cumulatively building a new regional multielement foundation dataset analysing 48 elements of the periodic table.
This evolving dataset is providing a new layer of baseline geochemical prospectivity and together with surface geological observations, defining the company’s exploration plan for 2023 and beyond
NT Minerals Limited Managing Director Hugh Thomas commented: “Multi-year regional soil sampling has been a very effective tool for exploration at Redbank and continues to support exploration activity into the future.
“Soils also give us a look into the prospectivity of areas that historically may have had limited exploration”
Soils also give us a look into the prospectivity of areas that historically may have had limited exploration. Commitment to this strategic work is building our regional geochemical knowledge and driving our drilling efforts.
We look forward to reporting further on the early-season Calvert soils program in the next few weeks and the remainder of the season’s work into the new calendar year.”
The Redbank Project is located in the southeast McArthur Basin and extends from the Northern Territory/Queensland border north-west to Glencore’s McArthur Mine.
In July 2020, NT Minerals secured a district scale tenement holding, pegging open ground following ‘ground-breaking’ work by Geoscience Australia. This work highlighted the prospectivity for Tier 1 base metal deposits between the world-class deposits of McArthur River and Century.
NT Minerals Limited through its 100% subsidiary Redbank Operations holds the tenements with a 100% interest.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: NT Minerals Ltd
