AW1 expands US critical metals drill program to up to 10,000m

Our US critical minerals Investment American West Metals (ASX: AW1 | OTC: AWMLF) has just confirmed the details of its expanded diamond drill program at the West Desert Project in Utah.

The program has been upsized to up to 10,000m of diamond drilling, which will be funded for by the $10M heavily oversubscribed placement AW1 closed last week.

This is the "most active period of exploration" ever undertaken at West Desert by AW1.

West Desert is the largest undeveloped JORC-compliant indium resource in the United States.

AW1 is now drilling four distinct high-priority target types, all outside the current Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE):

The four targets to be drilled

Here is a look at the drilling program from prior:

(source)

Here is a look at the new target areas now that drilling will be expanded:

(source)

AW1 has capacity to expand the drilling from the rig it currently has on site and is in advanced discussions into securing a second drill rig.

1. Meteor Prospect - 4km magnetic anomaly

The first hole of the 2026 drill program (WD26-01) hit a continuous 77.65m interval of visual skarn mineralisation containing strong zinc (sphalerite) and copper (chalcopyrite) sulphides.

This is similar to prior drilling on the project which also hosts indium and other critical metals.

This was the visual mineralisation hit we covered a few weeks ago -AW1 hits visual mineralisation - 430m away from the largest Indium deposit in the US.

Assays are still pending - and follow-up drilling will now aim to expand this thick zone of visual mineralisation.

Due to the visuals seen in the prior hole, this is the most advanced new target on the project right now.

2. Goldilocks high-grade critical metals zone

Follow-up drilling at the Goldilocks zone (outside the MRE) where prior drilling has confirmed grades up to:

• 324g/t Indium
• 4.9% Copper
• 155g/t Silver
• 5.4g/t Gold

That's a copper-gold-silver-indium zone sitting along the porphyry contact and until now it has barely been tested.

(source)

This is a look at a core form this mineralisation:

(source)

3. West Desert look-alike geophysical targets

The West Desert deposit sits within magnetite-rich skarn that is ~twice the density of the surrounding host rocks.

This makes it particularly easy to spot using gravity and magnetic surveys.

The magnetic feature hosting the existing resource extends for over 5.6km - and there are multiple untested gravity and magnetic targets along that trend.

These have those exact same geophysical signatures which are very similar to the area hosting the current MRE.

The success of hole 1 (hitting visual sulphides where the geophysics indicated they could be) is a positive sign for the model, so now AW1 is testing the rest of the look-alikes.

(source)

4. Apex-style high-grade gallium - Juab Fault

This is the one we’re most interested in.

Previous drilling (WD22-01C) intersected a combined 518m of gallium with a peak grade of 77.3 g/t Gallium.

AW1 will now drill targets along the Juab Fault - a geological setting similar to the Apex Gallium/Germanium Mine in Utah, which is the highest-grade gallium and germanium mine ever operated in the US.

(source)

If AW1 can replicate even a fraction of Apex-style mineralisation, the project goes from being "the largest indium resource in the US"...

To a multi-critical-metal asset covering indium, gallium AND germanium - which are three critical metals that China currently dominates supply of.

A reminder on what these three are used for:

• Indium - laser diodes and transceivers for high-speed optical data inside AI data centres
• Gallium - high-efficiency electronics and thermal management for AI chips (gallium oxide chips can be ~5x more conductive than silicon)
• Germanium - the critical dopant in fibre optic cores. AI server racks need 36x more fibre than traditional racks. China controls ~60% of global supply

For our deep dive on the drill program as it got underway on AW1’s indium/gallium/germanium project, see our most recent article: AW1: Drilling in the USA for critical metals... that China controls