Diversified miner Vale has opted to withdraw from an exploration venture with Serabi Gold, as confirmed by the Aim- and TSX-listed mining and development company on Monday.

Despite this change, CEO Mike Hodgson has revealed that Serabi has garnered significant interest from several other groups eager to partner with it over its Palito complex in northern Brazil.

He said working with Vale had achieved a key objective of advancing its understanding of the Matilda prospect, as well as identifying other potential targets for copper porphyry mineralisation during the past year.

In an exploration update, Hodgson reported that the Matilda target demonstrated mineralisation that extended to more than 150 m depth with results for the final hole intersecting the depth continuation of mineralisation. Hole 23-MT-021, for instance, intersected 144 m at 0.26% copper and 0.06 g/t gold from 228 m, while Hole 23-MT-021 intersected 32 m at 0.40% copper and 0.10 g/t gold from 410 m.

“Matilda continues to deliver positive results and the team is focused on understanding the mineralisation. At the same time the wider exploration results to date show that Matilda is not unique, and the regional geological system is larger and has more potential for hosting copper porphyry mineralisation than expected. The discovery of new, large targets within the extensive tenement holding demonstrates the potential of the region,” said Hodgson.

Further, the induced polarisation (IP) programme, completed in December, over the Sao Domingos property, identified a 1 km by 0.25 km wide chargeability anomaly, which underlies several areas of artisanal activity.

“The new IP geophysics and soil geochemistry results, combined with the historic high-grade results from 2021, make São Domingos a highly compelling target. This new data set has helped us understand better the past successful drilling results of 2021 (7.15 m at 258 g/t). We have revised our initial geological interpretation and are a significant step closer to identifying the source that has supported extensive artisanal workings in the area,” said Hodgson.

He said that Serabi had only just started unlocking the potential of the district. “The discovery of the alkalic porphyry style copper/gold deposit at Matida is highly significant for the district and for Serabi. With more targets defined, we are conscious of the need to continue focused exploration with the objective of demonstrating the viability of at least one target.”