The hit, which Sun Silver estimates to be close to ‘true width’, included an18.29m zone grading 305.7 grams per tonne of silver equivalent from around 215m.
It all comes from the Gerard O’Donovan-led explorer’s inaugural drilling program across the northwestern section of its Maverick Springs project, which the company hopes will drive a major resource upgrade for the US asset.
Speaking at last week’s Gold Forum Americas 2024 in Colorado Springs, O’Donovan said the focus area of the drilling was based on the company’s meticulous assessment of historical exploration in the area.
“When we obtained all the historical data … we started interrogating it to identify high-grade zones within the ore body, and it drew our attention to a raft of different intercepts throughout the ore body that were over 100gpt, with many over 50 metres,” he said.
“But we were drawn specifically to the northwest of the property, to four specific intercepts — 54m at 303gpt, 55m at 278gpt, 100m at 113gpt, 54m at 142gpt. We were scratching our head and said, ‘Something’s going on in this location.’
“We did a basic gram-metre map. We overlaid it on the ore body and, essentially, it lit up like a Christmas tree in the northwest section.”
All this was within five weeks of the company listing on the ASX.
It drove the decision to launch the 7500m drilling program across this section of Maverick Springs, and the first batch of holes have so far shown higher average grades than the current Maverick Springs resource of 423 million ounces at 67.25gpt silver equivalent.
This is not to mention early-stage antimony opportunity at the project, with today’s results also showing antimony grades of 0.12% over 1.5m.
O’Donovan said last week the company was certainly exploring the potential for antimony to assist with government funding and permitting ala Perpetua Resources, which has received major government support for the antimony by-product of its Stibnite gold project in Idaho given the rising importance of the critical mineral for defence applications.
However, he made it clear that Sun Silver’s core focus would remain on silver.
The company aims to publish a new MRE for Maverick Springs before the end of the year, and none of this will come from infill work.
“It will be all the extensional drilling that we’re targeting to bring into the resource. It’s higher grade than the existing resource, and it’s thicker, so it would be a significant upgrade,” O’Donovan told delegates at the forum.
Sun Silver has around 18 more holes to drill at the project as part of its current program.
First production from Maverick Springs is still several years away, but O’Donovan said once the resource upgrade was complete, the company would look to carry out metallurgical testwork and begin fundamental studies to assess the viability of the asset.
