Irish gold and zinc explorer Connemara Mining aims to further advance exploration activities on key gold and zinc prospects, following the successful execution of several drilling programmes at these projects, Connemara Mining CEO Patrick Cullen tells Mining Weekly.

Connemara currently holds interests in 47 licences, including joint ventures with Teck at the Oldcastle zinc project straddling the border of Meath and Cavan and with Group Eleven Resources at the Stonepark zinc project, in Limerick, Ireland.

Connemara also owns the Derrykearn project in the Laois and Kilkenny counties, where extensive historical work comprising geochemical sampling and drilling has been compiled and new drill targets are being investigated.

Active exploration programmes on the company’s gold projects at Inishowen, in Donegal, are under way. Drilling on the Wicklow/Wexford project has started.

“We were able to raise funding for activities in the near term and we have raised great interest in the market with our share price rising significantly,” Cullen points out, adding that Connemara expects to be funded going forward, particularly in terms of the gold projects.

Key to Cullen is Connemara’s zinc prospects, particularly as zinc prices have doubled in the past two years. Zinc reached its highest prices in a decade at $3 000/t, with prices strengthening on the forecast of a supply deficit for the next two years.

Further, Ireland is ranked first worldwide in terms of zinc discovered per square kilometre, while the zinc ore is of a high grade and a quality that allows for easy metallurgical processing.

Major players in this commodity sector in Ireland include Boliden’s Tara zinc operation – Europe’s largest zinc mine – while recent mine operations include Lundin Resources’ Galmoy mine and diversified miner Vedanta Resources’ Lisheen mine.

Connemara’s joint venture Stonepark project is also in close proximity to diversified major Glencore’s Pallas Green project, which is currently Ireland’s largest undeveloped zinc/lead resource. Drilling is under way at Pallas Green.

Boosting excitement in Ireland’s exploration space is the country’s favourable rating as a mining and mining investment destination. Ireland was rated as the third-most mining friendly jurisdiction in Europe and ninth in the world, according to the Fraser Institute’s latest yearly survey on attractive regions for mining investment, Cullen highlights.

He underscores Ireland’s favourable tax regime and political stability, particularly in terms of its mining laws, quipping that, if companies are trying to balance political risk with prospects, “Ireland is a good place to look”.

Connemara has been most active on its gold prospects, with the focus having shifted to the Mine River gold project, in Wicklow and Westford. Connemara has completed permitting and access permissions at several locations of the project and has started drilling programmes, which will entail 500 m of core drilling at two key locations.

“What is very exciting is [being] the first company to drill at Gibbet Hill, which we hope will confirm the extent of a trend identified by Connemara. Also, at the Tom Breen target, our geologists now believe that some historical drilling most likely stopped in mineralisation. There is a 15-km-long trend to be explored in the block and we are looking forward to developing this project going forward,” says Connemara chairperson John Teeling.

Further, following the release of an exploration update on its wholly owned Inishowen gold project, in Donegal, Connemara aims to expand activities on the project, Cullen tells Mining Weekly.

Connemara last month reported assay results from a five-hole drill programme, conducted in October, at the Meeneragh gold target, in the south-east of the project, to better understand the gold-bearing veins orientation and grade.

Hole 17-MR-08 intercepted gold mineralisation from 21.5 m, grading at 14.25 g/t gold over 0.5 m and confirms that the vein is steeply dipping. Hole 17-MR-09 returned 1 m at 0.35 g/t gold associated with a 20 cm quartz vein from 42.6 m, confirming the continuity of the vein along strike.

While Hole 17-MR-11 intercepted a new vein 100 m south at 0.43 g/t gold over 0.5 m from 5.9 m, no other significant mineralisation was intercepted in the other holes.

The prospecting has located gold in bedrock in the vicinity of Meeneragh, which returned 0.14 g/t gold, providing scope for the discovery of further mineralisation in the wider area, Teeling commented in the exploration update statement.

The confirmation of the orientation and grade of veins, including the discovery of a new vein to the south, has enabled Connemara geologists to define a new wider exploration programme around the target, Cullen says. Follow-up work will include further interpretation of existing geophysical data and newly processed data from the government-funded Tellus airborne geophysical survey, which will be available in February 2018. This is expected to assist in better defining the regional fault structures.

“We have identified some good grades in the early stages of drilling and we are starting to understand the geometry of mineralisation better, but we are also going to take that understanding and expand it into the greater block,” Cullen concludes.