WCE shallow drilling results show silver continuing to the north

Our silver Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) just hit potential extensions to 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 released results from aircore (AC) drilling which showed silver mineralisation to the north/south and south east of the old workings:

(source)

There were some higher grade hits (especially for AC results) immediately to the north along trend, some of these included:

• 24m @ 28g/t silver from surface in hole 1
• 25m @ 80g/t silver from 1m in hole 3
• 4m @ 88g/t silver from surface in hole 26

(source)

There was also 1 of the 3 holes done out to the east (top right of image) which showed some silver, so maybe there is potential for some parallel geology.

Although this is early to be speculating on with just a couple of holes drilled and no holes done north/south of here to test for any continuation.

WCE confirmed today that this north area will be drilled immediately and will be included in an open pit resource study and scoping study:

(source)

Interestingly WCE noted that mineralisation to the north is hosted in granite which differs from the mine area, so this opens up new exploration areas which expands the project's potential.

Results from the south were generally lower grade, although this did show there is some silver near surface, so this may be followed up with deeper drilling.

Although the focus nearby will be to the north which makes sense in the near term to see what is close by and near the surface that can be included in a resource that could be mined in the near term.

The above drilling was done on the “Munni Munni” fault, WCE also drilled some holes to the southeast of the fault and located base metals in these results:

(source)

These included nickel, copper and cobalt amongst some silver, although these were on the lower end of grade, it is only AC drilling and the results are near surface.

So this would warrant some follow up to test deeper and gain a better understanding of how the geology extends across the project, especially as the project has seen minimal exploration away from the mine.

So with mineralisation found in a different rock form to the north and minimal prior exploration project wide, we are interested to see some deeper drilling out there.

What’s next for WCE?

Results from aircore drilling on regional targets✅

The results from the drilling WCE’s been doing across its regional targets (with a shallow aircore rig) were released today.

Near-mine and regional exploration 🔄

The 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 quarter, so within the next few weeks.

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.