With the backing of partner South32, explorer Trilogy Metals will expand its drilling programme at the Bornite copper/cobalt project, in Alaska, with two more drilling rigs to be added, the TSX-listed company announced on Thursday.
South32 has agreed to increase its contribution to this year’s drilling programme by funding an additional $800 000, which Trilogy will use to add the extra drill rigs to complete four holes totalling 1 500 m to 2 100 m.
The original programme envisaged an 8 000 m exploration programme of infill and expansion drilling to better define the high-grade copper resources at the Bornite project. Five drills are expected to be in operation for at least a month with the drilling campaign extending into the middle of September.
Trilogy has so far completed five drill holes comprising a total of 5 267 m at Bornite, where mineralisation occurs as a series of reefs.
Expedited initial assay results from drill hole RC18-0247, which is designed to test extensions of high-grade copper mineralisation at depth, along the South Reef trend, showed that it contains, at a copper cutoff grade of 1.5%, an interval of 16.4 m, grading 5.34% copper and 0.21% cobalt.
Once the drilling programme is completed, Trilogy will move forward on an updated copper/cobalt resource estimate, which is expected to be completed in the first half of next year. The current resource estimate for Bornite is 77-million pounds of inferred cobalt.
A preliminary economic assessment is pencilled in for completion in the second quarter of next year.
The extra $800 000 that South32 is contributing to this year’s drilling programme at Bornite will reduce the diversified miner’s minimum exploration budget commitment for 2019 from $10-million to $9.2-million.