WCE to start silver drilling in March - maiden resource due in H2-2026

Our silver Investment West Coast Silver (ASX: WCE) will be drilling next month to follow up on the shallow AC results received last week at 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 confirmed that it will be back drilling this month with an RC drill rig, following up on the mineralisation seen in the AC drill results that were released last week.

Drilling results from this program will be added to an inaugural Mineral Resource Estimate that is due in the second half of this year.

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

This drilling is intended to follow up on the prior shallow drilling to both the north and south, although the recent results to the north were most notable.

WCE hit shallow mineralisation immediately to the north of prior drilling, which included these results:

• 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

WCE believes there is a silver corridor extending to the north, so will be looking to drill deeper (to around 150m) to confirm the extent of the mineralisation:

(source)

There were some result to the south of the mine also along the Munni Munni fault, here is where those are located that are also being followed up:

(source)

So we await for confirmation that drilling has commenced which should be within the next 4 weeks, we covered the recent results here.

What’s next for WCE?

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 month , 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.