Inaugural drilling at the high-grade Maverick Springs project has confirmed what the pXRF readings were showing earlier this month – Sun Silver (ASX:SS1) has discovered silver mineralisation 115m outside the boundary of its current inferred 292Moz silver equivalent resource.
A best intersection of 126.75g/t silver across 41.15m has been unearthed in hole MR24-186 from 231.65m downhole, the first extension hole of the 7500m drilling campaign. That included a 13m intersection at the higher grade of 331.76g/t.
Drill hole MR24-188 also intersected 83.89g/t AgEq including 63.94g/t Ag over 54.86m from 193.55m. Higher internal intercepts included 185.50g/t AgEq and 154.73g/t Ag over 10.67m from 204.22m and 257.37g/t AgEq and 244.93g/t Ag over 4.57m from 242.32m.
That’s significant, SS1 says, as it confirms historical data reviews and reinforces its decision to start drilling outside the north-west resource barrier, with antimony grades also warranting further investigation. Anomalous antimony readings from the most recent lab assays have returned readings of up to 1845ppm or 0.18% Sb.
A total of ~200 holes for ~60,000m within the Maverick Springs resource has been completed to date, covering an area representing only ~20% of the property.
Already a critical mineral for use in advanced technologies antimony, which has the periodic table code of Sb, has just had export restrictions placed on it by China. With its regional allies, China controls 90% of global supply.
A 10,001ppm hit found in historical data equates to 1% Sb. That’s much higher in grade compared to the USA’s only near-term producer of the commodity, Perpetua Resources.
Its Stibnite gold-antimony project grades 0.064% – and is thought to only meet 35% of America’s demand for the defence commodity. Perpetua has received US$59.4m in government funding to advance the project.
As a result of these initial investigations, the SS1 exploration team will identify historical core and RC chips for re-assay focusing on antimony and other minerals not previously assayed.
These systematic reviews of historic silver and gold intercepts will assist in confirming the theory that the Maverick Springs project is potentially a silver, gold and antimony deposit.
