WCE aircore drilling starts on regional targets at the Elizabeth Hill silver mine
Our silver Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) has just begun an aircore drilling program at its Elizabeth Hill silver mine.
WCE owns 70% of the Elizabeth Hill mine - which was once the highest grade silver producing mine in Australia.
The mine produced ~1.2M ounces of silver at average grades of ~2,194g/t (over a 12 month period 25 years ago).
This aircore drilling is in addition to diamond drilling, which was confirmed today to have finished, last week it saw visual silver in drill cores, which we covered here.
So we can expect to see assays on the diamond drilling soon (likely in the next few weeks as the announcement states assays are already pending for the visible silver holes).
And then we get to see aircore drilling on WCE’s regional targets which is a big part of the reason we Invested in WCE.
(We are Invested to see WCE find near surface mineralisation at Elizabeth Hill and have a crack at making repeat discoveries on regional targets)
(Source)
Given the Elizabeth hill mine sits on a geological fault which extends for hundreds of meters north and south on the mine lease alone (WCE also has rights to the surrounding leases), this will be one of the surrounding areas of focus.
There are already several regional targets, so the geophysical surveys and aircore drilling results will be used to help further define and rank and possibly discover new targets for deeper drilling.
Here are the planned AC drill areas in relation to the Elizabeth Hill Mine and the fault
(Source)
What’s next for WCE?
Drilling results from phase two drill program🔄
We are especially looking forward to what comes from the deeper drillholes from the phase two drill program, especially with the visual silver being reported.
(Source)
Near-mine and regional exploration 🔄
We want to see the results of the geophysics and air core drilling now underway to further define near-mine and regional targets:
(Source - WCE announcement 22 August 2025)
Update on processing negotiations 🔄
In a prior exploration update, WCE said it was in discussions with Artemis Resources who own the Radio Hill processing plant, ~20km away.
The plant has been idle for some years now and was previously being refurbished by Artemis but due primarily to a fall in nickel prices, has not been utilised for several years so there exists a conveniently located opportunity.
