WCE hits more high grade silver - resource update due Q4

Our Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) just hit more high grade silver from its infill drill program at its project in WA.

WCE’s project previously produced 1.2M ounces of silver at ~2,194g/t from just 16,830 tonnes of ore, before mining stopped in 2000 when the silver price collapsed to ~US$5/oz.

So we know the project is very high grade already.

In April this year WCE put out a maiden 2.8Moz resource at 617g/t silver.

Today's holes were drilled to infill that resource confirming the project has pods of some seriously high grade mineralisation:

(source)

The headline hit was 38.3m at 878g/t silver from just 3.7m downhole, including a half metre slice at 64,745g/t silver.

These are shallow hits from within the existing resource (that's the infill part), but they came in higher grade than the earlier drilling around them:

(source)

And here is a look at the two higher grade results from today down hole and as a bonus, all three holes also hit silver outside the current resource to the west, near surface:

(source)

Infill drilling is all about confidence in the resource.

More of the resource sitting in the higher confidence categories means more of it can be used in the upcoming studies.

As a reminder, WCE is doing this ahead of a Scoping Study on a near term production opportunity, aiming at an open pit on the granted mining licence over the historic mine.

So because there is a granted mining lease here already, this removes one of the larger barriers in terms of time.

And for an open pit, a resource at 617g/t silver is ridiculously high grade.

Using the current silver price of $68.5/oz and gold at $4,600/oz, the 617g/t silver resource is equivalent in value to ~9.25g/t gold.

A higher confidence resource estimate matters to a project going through production studies because it's typically what the larger institutional investors look for when thinking about development financing for a project.

(the more certain a company is in its orebody, the less risky it is for a financier to back, so this type of drilling is required to help reduce the gaps)

See our educational article on resource categories here: What is a JORC resource? How does a company define a resource? 🎓

It all rolls into the updated resource due in Q4 2026, then the Scoping Study, which we covered in our last note.

Resource update and Scoping Study all ahead

Recently WCE gave a tidy summary of its forward plan in an announcement as it moves from explorer to developer and hopefully beyond in a nearer term production opportunity:

(source)

Final assays from the last three diamond holes landed today.

So now everything then rolls into an updated resource in Q4 and the Elizabeth Hill Scoping Study to commence then also.

We did mention in our initiation note that we were interested to see WCE exploring broader looking to find a repeat Elizabeth Hill.

So we have also been tracking the progress in the targeting which WCE included this today (which aligns with the Next steps above to see added exploration programs):

(source)

What’s next for WCE?

Here is WCE’s latest Gantt chart with everything we can expect to see over the coming months:

(source - WCE’s latest investor presentation)

In terms of exploration the three things we are looking out for are:

1. The RC drill campaign on the targets to the north of the Elizabeth Hill Mine (happening now).
2. The diamond drilling is going for at depth extensions to the Elizabeth Hill mine (started Mid April).
3. Geophysics across the broader project area

And then all of that data rolling into what we expect to be an updated JORC resource being fed into a Scoping Study, expected to get underway in Q4.

Here are the milestones we are tracking right now:

• ✅ Drilling results (received today)
• 🔄 Updated mineral resource estimate (planned for Q4 - from today)
• 🔲 Scoping study starts
• 🔲 Scoping study results