Preparing For Upcoming Drilling Campaign In Brazil
Meridian Mining SE (TSXV: MNO) has initiated field work at its Cabaçal VMS Copper- Gold project in Brazil
The company has now entered into the pre-drilling period with the commencement of aerial surveys to map the local terrain and to locate historical drill platforms, the renting of field facilities and the signing of multi-year land access agreements.
The rapid advancement of the Cabaçal field programmd is being managed by Meridian’s in-country management team and conducted under strict Covid-19 safety protocols.
Multi-year land access agreements are being formalised, granting access for multiple diamond drill rigs to commence Cabaçal’s resource confirmation and definition drill programmes,
Pre-drill work includes drone-based aerial surveys aimed at producing high-quality orthophotography and topographic data over the historical Cabaçal Mine and Mine Corridor targets;
At the same time, digitising of BP Mineral’s and Rio Tinto’s archived records is progressing to increase Cabaçal’s geological, mining and metallurgical database.
Field activity at Cabaçal has advanced since the recent closing of the company’s non-brokered $4.3M oversubscribed capital raising, The preparation for the forthcoming verification drill programmes also includes the programme to twin historical drill holes covering the historical Cabaçal resource, where VMS hosted Copper-Gold (+Silver-Zinc-Lead) mineraliz=sation was historically defined by over 400 surface and underground DDHs, completed in the 1980’s – 1990’s by BP Minerals,
The Cabaçal mine was previously operated as a selective shallow underground Copper-Gold mine by BP Minerals and later by Rio Tinto using a gold only cut-off grade. The Cabaçal drill programme will target the extensive near surface shallow dipping stacked sheets of thick Copper-Gold (+Silver-Zinc-Lead) mineralisation in the central zone of the deposit, along with the extension of high-grade trends beyond the limit of historical mining.
A proportion of the drilling and trenching programme will be allocated to test regional geological-geochemical targets defined by BP Minerals and geophysical targets defined by the more recent VTEM survey.
CEO, Dr Adrian McArthur, said the company is in the final stages of evaluation of drilling tenders and has formalised an exploration agreement with the owner of the property hosting the area targeted by the Cabaçal resource definition program.
“The vompany is at the exciting pre-drilling period of unlocking the potential of an advanced truly camp scale VMS Copper-Gold project,” Dr McArthur said.
“The vompany’s initial field activities are advancing well, and we look forward to announcing the future results of the 10,000m infill- extensional drill and trenching programme, where it will be twinning a number of Cabaçal’s 400 historical DDHs.
“Additionally, the drill programme will also target high priority Maxwell plates via the first use of a ‘down hole’ EM vectoring tool.
“The company’s focus this year is to bring Cabaçal’s extensive historical database into compliance with NI43-101 reporting standards and commence exploration on the promising satellite targets for Copper-Gold and other base metal and silver mineralization across this VMS camp.
“Our Brazilian management team is successfully establishing good relations with local stakeholders to build on our social license to operate.”