JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Auroch Minerals on Tuesday announced that it had acquired 90% of the Arden and 100% of the Bonaventura zinc projects, in South Australia.

“The Arden project and Bonaventura project comprise a substantial zinc, lead and copper play supported by excellent infrastructure,” Auroch executive chairperson Glenn Whiddon commented.

The projects cover several historical mines and provide Auroch with multiple drill-ready targets for large-scale base-metal mineralisation that will be systematically evaluated in 2018, he added.

Arden has the potential to host large-scale zinc, lead, copper and cobalt stratiform sedimentary exhalative deposits.

Multiple assays found between 9% and 10% zinc, as well as 0.1% cobalt in historic trench-sampling at the Arden target over a strike length of 1.5 km, and with a total strike length of the prospective geological unit of more than 10 km. Further, up to 2.5% cobalt was found from recent sampling at the Kanyaka target within the project area.

The Arden project is supported by excellent infrastructure including rail, sealed roads, telecommunications and grid power.

The Arden project is located 35 km to the northeast of Quorn, about 3.5 hours’ drive north from Adelaide along highways and sealed roads. The project comprises a large exploration licence of 710 km² and has predominantly been cleared for farming comprising light grazing and some crops.

The railway passes just to the south of the tenement, and there are several port options relatively close-by, as well as Nyrstar’s large base-metals smelter and refinery in Port Pirie.

The Bonaventura zinc project covers highly prospective geology and historic mines along 30 m of strike of the regional-scale Cygnet-Snelling Fault, said Whiddon.

Previous drilling at Bonaventura hit high-grade zinc intersections, including 16 m at 3.4% zinc and 0.7% lead from 52 m, including 6 m at 6.3% zinc, and 11 m at 3.1% zinc and 1.5% lead from 26 m, including 1 m at 8.0% zinc.

“Samples from the historic Kohinoor gold mine returned grades up to 28 g/t gold. The Bonaventura project has several high-grade zinc (base-metal) and gold targets that are drill-ready,” he highlighted.

The Bonaventura project comprises a large exploration licence of 234 km2 in the northern part of Kangaroo Island. The project area has been previously cleared for grazing, and the infrastructure and access are good.

The project contains several small historic zinc, copper and gold mines, and was most-recently explored by Monax Mining. Several targets have been drill-tested.

“The Vinco target, which is situated 1 500 m along strike from the Bonaventura target, has had high-resolution helimag, induced polarisation and gravity surveys completed, resulting in coincident gravity and chargeability anomalies that present a drill-ready target,” said Whiddon.

Soil-sampling over the Bonaventura project has also been completed and shows strong zinc anomalism following the strike of the regional Cygnet-Snelling Fault, although in places there is transported cover that masks the anomaly.

Lead anomalism up to 2 700 parts per million has also been delineated by the surface geochemistry results. In addition to the base metal targets, the Kohinoor target remains highly prospective for gold mineralisation, historic composite samples taken from the first level of the main historic workings including results of 28 g/t gold, 9.5 g/t gold, 5.2 g/t gold, and 3.2 g/t gold.