The width of the mineralised zone at junior exploration company Arc Minerals’ Cheyeza East target area is now more than 300 m and still open-ended, according to further drill results from the company’s maiden exploration drill programme in Zambia.

This is demonstrated by drill holes six and seven, which were drilled about 100 m on either side of drill holes four and five respectively, according to a company statement released last month.

“These holes were designed to test for the width of the mineralisation encountered along this drill profile, particularly the high grades of copper that were encountered in holes four and five. “Although lower in grade compared with holes four and five, these holes are still mineralised and demonstrate that the width of the mineralised zone along this profile exceeds 300 m,” notes Arc Minerals.

Arc Minerals executive chairperson Nick von Schirnding says drill holes eight, nine, ten and 12, drilled along strike and to the north-east have confirmed that the strike length to the mineralised zone in the north of this target area is at least 650 m long.

“As the team on the ground continues to probe the Cheyeza East target area with coarse-spaced drill holes to test the extent of the mineralised area, I am encouraged to see that the mineralisation encountered to date is still relatively shallow at generally less than 100 m below surface.”

The Cheyeza Target Area (CTA) is one of several areas identified by the geophysics and geochemistry work programmes completed by Arc Minerals last year. As reported in June this year, a 3 km × 0.8 km area at Cheyeza East is of particular interest, as this is where up to 2 792 parts per million (ppm) copper has been identified.

Drilling continues, both along strike and down dip, at this anomaly to test its full extent, says Arc Minerals.

“Thus far, the drilling programme at Cheyeza East has been highly encouraging and is continuing at pace,” says Von Schirnding.

Drill holes eight and nine were drilled along the same profile as drill holes two and three, for which incomplete assays have been received to date. Holes eight and nine were designed to test the extents of the mineralisation to the south-west of hole two and demonstrate that the mineralisation is still open-ended along this drill profile.

Drill holes ten and 12 were drilled about 350 m along strike to the north-west of the drill profile – with holes two, three, eight and nine – and demonstrate that the mineralisation is seemingly continuous across these three drill profiles in the northern part of the target area.

Drill hole 11 is the first hole drilled in the southern part of the target area and did not appear to intersect any mineralisation of significance, says Arc Minerals, noting that the assay results were received by Zamsort, a company in which Arc Minerals has a 66% shareholding, from testing laboratories company SGS’s Kalulushi branch, in Zambia.

While the company awaits the results of several new holes at Cheyeza East, Von Schirnding says investors should also look forward to maiden drilling at Lumbeta and West Lunga – two significant new targets about which the company is “extremely excited”.

The 2019 exploration season started in March, initially over the CTA and moved to other target areas identified by the 2018 regional soil geochemistry and aerial geophysics programmes.

One such target area is the Lumbeta Target Area (LTA), where a third drill rig is mobilising. More than 3 700 infill soil samples were collected at LTA on a 200 m × 50 m grid, with soil geochemistry indicating that the target area may be copper bearing, adds Von Schirnding.

The infill soil sampling programme over the key target areas was carried out and supervised by a geological team from Zamsort.

The samples from LTA were processed at the Kalaba exploration camp, where they were dried, sieved and compressed into a pellet using a hand-operated mechanical press.

The pressed pellets were subsequently analysed using a portable hand-held X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer for a range of elements, including copper and associated minerals.

The background copper values at the LTA range between 25 ppm and 50 ppm with values of up to 378 ppm copper being returned by the XRF.

Arc Minerals says the soil geochemistry also indicates that from the anomalous highs, the LTA may be divided into western, central and eastern zones.

“The largest of these zones is the western zone where the soil analysis [above 100 ppm] can be traced for about 4 km and appears to represent the limbs of an interpreted anticline in this part of the licence,” says Von Schirnding.