WCE identifies 20 new silver targets on silver project in WA

Our silver Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) has just identified 20 regional targets with some near and along strike of its Elizabeth Hill Mine in WA.

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).

WCE has been drilling into and immediately surrounding the old mine looking for extensions to the known old workings.

Today WCE has uncovered 20 new structural targets for silver mineralisation from a magnetic drone survey.

Eight of those targets sit within 1.2km of the old Elizabeth Hill mine:

(source)

Elizabeth Hill was one of Australia's highest grade silver mines when it operated 25+ years ago, producing ~1.2M ounces at average grades of ~2,194g/t silver.

So it was a high grade project, with much of this mineralisation still remaining and more being revealed in recent drilling.

There is a followup drilling expected to begin this month and all of the results are expected to be used in a Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate that’s due in the second half of this year. (source)

The current resource is Non JORC compliant, but sat at ~46.8kt @ 2,700g/t silver for 4.05Moz remnant resource. (source).

Back in the day production here stopped when the silver price dropped to ~US5$/oz and mining suddenly stopped when the project's JV partners at the time fell out. (source)

Currently silver is trading at ~17x that at over US$85/oz…

So the idea here is pretty simple and part of the reason we made our Investment here last year: can WCE find repeats of Elizabeth Hill along the same fault structure?

(source - Our Initiation article)

Today's survey results suggest there's some signs that the old mine may not be a standalone occurrence in the area.

The drone magnetics covered ~14km² and was centred along the Munni Munni fault, which is the key structure that hosts the silver mineralisation at Elizabeth Hill, running north-south.

The survey has picked up fault bends, intersections and structural jogs that weren't visible from older, wider-spaced regional surveys.

WCE's geologists have interpreted 20 structural targets at positions where faults intersect, which WCE believe are the types of "trap sites" where silver mineralisation could have accumulated.

Here is a picture of the drone in action (the drone up the top and the magnetic survey device hanging underneath:

(source)

With WCE stating that 8 targets within 1.2km of the old Elizabeth Hill mine, 6 of them are lined up south along the Munni Munni fault in a "Pearls-On-a-String" pattern (this analogy from oil and gas exploration).

So IF they can find silver mineralisation in one of these structural targets identified, arguably the chances of the other targets (and elsewhere within the project area) would increase.

In addition to this, is that several of the new magnetic targets overlap with anomalous assays from WCE's recent aircore drilling and surface sampling.

So there's already geochemical support for the structural interpretation, giving further support to what at this stage is a theory that requires more work (particularly drilling) to confirm.

Remembering that WCE's recent diamond drilling confirmed a broader halo of base-metal sulphides (copper, lead and zinc) surrounding the silver veins.

So this also opens up another geophysical technique (Induced Polarisation) to detect the sulphide-rich zones along these new structures which WCE stated in today's announcement.

WCE will now go about ranking and prioritising the 20 targets, then looking at using IP surveys to refine the drill targets.

On the back of today’s results, the broader drone magnetics program is being expanded, WCE says it will fly the full ~180km² project area in Q1-Q2 2026, covering all of those regional targets we've been following.

In the near term, WCE's RC drilling program is due to kick off this month, following up on the aircore results that showed silver trending particularly to the north of the old mine workings.

So we await for confirmation that drilling is underway.

What’s next for WCE?

Near-mine and regional exploration 🔄

The recent AC drilling results from immediately to the north of the known mineralisation/mine are worthy of followup and WCE will be drilling with a deeper capable RC rig. WCE said the results are to be used in open pit resource planning and a scoping study. This drilling is expected to begin this month, so within the next few weeks. (source)

WCE is also looking to follow up on the magnetic drone survey results which identified 20 structural targets, with several of these showing along strike on the same fault running through the mine.

These results match prior soil sampling and AC drilling, so the magnetics program is being expanded across the broader project area set for Q1-Q2 and an IP survey to be run on the current area to help rank the confirmed targets for drilling. (source)

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.