Arc Minerals shares sank on Thursday after the group announced the completion of its initial drilling programme at the Virgo Project, located in Botswana’s Kalahari Copper Belt.
The exploration company has successfully concluded a 3,000-metre drilling campaign across eight holes at its PL135/2017 license area, yet the market seems unhappy with the results as shares fell over 10% in early trade on Thursday.
The most significant results came from diamond drill hole ALV-DD-004, which yielded copper-silver mineralisation of 1.29% copper equivalent over 3 metres, within a broader intersection of 0.82% copper equivalent over 6 metres.
Six additional holes encountered elevated to anomalous copper mineralisation, demonstrating geological characteristics similar to MMG’s operational Zone 5 underground mine in the region. This will provide some solace for investors.
The drilling programme was initially designed to explore extensions of previously identified mineralisation in the adjacent MMG license, where historical drilling had returned impressive results of 4.3 metres at 1.65% copper equivalent and 6.1 metres at 2.56% copper equivalent.
Analysis of the drill core suggests that this first phase intersected the lateral fringe of the copper zone, specifically within an iron-rich area that is interpreted as the outer halo of the main mineralised zone. Arc Minerals is currently evaluating the data and developing plans for a second phase of drilling, which will target the interpreted inner copper sulphide zone, moving away from the iron-rich area.
“I am very pleased to report that assay results from the first phase of drilling at our Botswana project identified good copper mineralisation and similar geological settings to neighbouring MMG’s Zone 5,” said Nick von Schirnding, Executive Chairman of Arc Minerals.
“These results confirm our view that we have economic grades of copper mineralisation especially in the context of increasing interest by majors in our license. We will continue our drill programme to target the inner copper zone, presenting what we believe to be a further 5km strike along which to drill.“