WCE hits 33,107g/t silver intercept from one of Australia’s highest grade old silver mines
Our silver Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) just hit one of the most outrageous intercepts we have ever seen…
27.4m at 1,314g/t silver…
Including a tiny (but very high grade) 0.35m intercept at 33,107g/t silver.
(source)
That’s one of the strongest intercepts we have seen from any silver explorer.
The result came from just inside WCE’s old mining stopes - so we expected the intercept to have silver - the grade and thickness really did surprise us to the upside though.
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).
So its good to see that the results today are confirming there is still left over (very high grade) silver in and around the old mine workings:
(source)
These results confirm high-grade silver mineralisation near surface and above the historically mined stope from back in when it was mined from 1998-2000. (source).
We note, WCE also has an 46.8kt @ 2,700g/t silver for 4.05Moz foreign resource. (source)
(source)
WCE also confirmed today that the company would now look to put out a JORC resource estimate and economic studies on a potential development scenario for the remnant ore at the project.
We note WCE have already signed an MoU with Artemis resources who has an idle plant nearby that could process the ore from WCE’s Elizabeth Hill. (see our coverage of that news here)
Another thing we noticed in today’s announcement was WCE’s comments around potential extensions along the “Munni Munni fault” which runs through the old Elizabeth Hill mine - so it will be interesting to see what any extensional drilling delivers to the north and south of the existing old workings.
What’s next for WCE?
Results from aircore drilling on regional targets🔄
Next we want to see results from the drilling WCE’s been doing across its regional targets (with a shallow aircore rig).
Results from those holes are expected this month.
(source)
Near-mine and regional exploration 🔄
We want to see the results of the geophysics and air core drilling that is now complete to further define near-mine and regional targets, assays for this are due by the end of February (source):
(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.
Recently WCE confirmed that these negotiations have progressed to a MOU to look further into processing ore at this plant.
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.
