Africa-focused base and precious metals exploration and production company Cradle Arc on Friday announced that it had renewed prospecting licences to the north of its flagship Mowana copper mine, in Botswana, along the same Bushman Lineament that hosts the current resource estimate for Mowana.
“Gaining renewed access to this vast piece of additional exploration ground is an exciting result for the company. Historical regional geophysics show that the shear zone passes through the renewed permits, and the board believes that the likelihood of the structure continuing to be mineralised is very high,” commented Cradle Arc CEO and South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy fellow Kevin van Wouw.
“When this significant strike length is enhanced by evidence from our planned deep drilling in due course, there is clearly significant potential for future underground workings and a substantial mine life for Mowana.”
The PL33/2005 and PL180/2008 prospecting licences are located immediately north and along strike of the existing Mowana copper mine in Botswana. The permits are valid for two years, until September 30, 2020.
“Historical exploration work performed over part of this area comprises ground magnetic surveys completed over PL33/2005 in 2014/15 by African Copper. The ground magnetic surveys yielded positive results and showed that the Bushman Lineament extends into the licence area and trends in a NNE-SSW direction along strike from Mowana.
“This historical work demonstrates that the structural trend continues and serves to increase the company’s understanding of the lineament,” Cradle Arc said in a statement.
The company plans to conduct further geophysics in due course to extend through the PL180/2008 permit area, followed by a maiden drilling programme with the objective of proving mineralisation within the known structure.
“To date, the Bushman Lineament has only been tested as far as the Mowana North Extension, where high-grade downhole intercepts such as 50 m at 2.11% copper from 667 m in hole MWN007 (including 2 m at 9.13% Cu) and 19.28 m at 2.94% copper from 272.38 m in hole MWN025, coincident with the NNE-SSW geophysical structural trend that hosts the Mowana mine.”
The North Extension currently forms the majority of the existing inferred resource estimate, with future drilling planned to upgrade it to the indicated and measured categories. The mineralisation is open along strike towards the renewed prospecting licences and Cradle Arc looks forward to drill testing this structure in due course.
The current 5 km of strike lies within 20 km of known geophysical structures (the ground magnetics at PL33/2005) and a total of 36 km strike potential across the existing mining and prospecting licences combined.
Multiple other historical diamond drill holes have intersected the mineralisation trend at depth and all indicate continuation of copper grades hosted by sulphides.