Si6 Metals has jagged shallow, high-grade supergene and primary copper-silver drill intersections at its Dibete project in east Botswana, including 2m at a whopping 4.2 per cent copper and 268 grams per tonne silver.
The hit is part of a wider 9m interval from 45m downhole grading 1.54 per cent copper and 82g/t silver from the first two reverse-circulation (RC) drillholes of an initial – and now completed – nine-hole, 1590m campaign. It is part of a staged program designed to cover some 10,000m within three flagship projects – Dibete, Airstrip and Maibele North.
At Dibete, where Si6 owns 63.1 per cent of an earn-in joint venture (JV) it shares with Botswanian company BCL Investments, the company is exploring a north-east-trending, 4.5km-by-1km area to a depth of 500m. Management says sub-surface pipe-like copper sulphide bodies are well defined by steeply-dipping audio-frequency magnetotelluric (AMT) and induced-polarisation (IP) conductive geophysical anomalies at the deposit.
The high-grade copper-silver drill results correlate to between 5 and 10 per cent supergene chalcocite disseminated in amphibolite. Lower-tenor (about 1 per cent) copper assays record 5 to 10 per cent disseminated primary chalcopyrite.
The company says it is testing the deeper fresh-rock geophysical anomalies using diamond drilling, some as tails off the end of RC drillholes. Real-time logging and drill targeting is being aided by use of a portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) machine.
Si6 Metals managing director Jim Malone said: “We are very excited with the initial results from Dibete, notwithstanding the lab delays experienced. These results expand the high-grade Dibete Cu-Ag discovery and have conformed the potentially economic tenor of Cu sulphides related to geophysical anomalies. With very high grades of 4.2% Cu and 269g/t Ag from the first two holes of this drilling campaign, Si6 looks forward with confidence to receiving the next round of results.”
Assays are still pending from Dibete and drilling is continuing at Airstrip and Maibele North, which are also contained within a centrally-located 185-square-kilometre tenement package. Management will conduct an open-pit mining review at Maibele North, where it also plans to include US$5 million (AU$7.84 million) spent on historical drilling into an updated mineral resource estimate.
The drill rig is currently churning at Airstrip, testing geophysical anomalies prior to moving nearby to Maibele North, where the current inferred JORC resource is 2.38 million tonnes containing 0.72 per cent nickel, 0.21 per cent copper, 0.36g/t palladium and 0.1g/t gold. It is scheduled to be infilled and upgraded and depth tested.
Enveloping the central JV tenement package, Si6 has sole control of more than 2000 square kilometres within east Botswana’s highly-prospective Limpopo Belt, just 20km from Premium Nickel Resources’ world-class Selebi-Phikwe mine.
It appears to put the company in a strong position to snag additional base-metal-rich drill intercepts in east Botswana by testing its AMT and IP geophysical anomalies. The market will no doubt be watching early next year when it defines a new JORC-compliant resource.
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By Rohan Halfpenny
