Rimfire Pacific Mining (ASX: RIM) has commenced drilling to test a high-priority copper target on its wholly-owned Valley Project in NSW, Australia.
The Valley is located 34km west of the North Parkes Copper Gold Mine which is operated by China Molybdenum Co., Ltd. and has total Measured and Indicated Resources (as at 31 December 2019) of 356Mt @0.55% copper, 0.20g.t gold (1.96Mt copper and 2.33Moz gold).
Parkes is the site of the New South Wales Government’s proposed Critical Minerals Hub which will be central point for mining and value added processing of critical minerals within the State.
“The Valley is a high-priority copper target that we have been wanting to drill for some time,” Managing Director, David Hutton, said.
“Following the success of our recent capital raising, Rimfire is now in the position to accelerate exploration on our 100%-owned projects including the Valley and our exploration team is excited to see what the drilling reveals.”
Rimfire is drill testing a high-priority copper (+gold) target at the Valley which may be indicative of a buried porphyry copper gold system.
Two reconnaissance holes (FI2079 and FI2081) drilled by Rimfire in 2021 at the Valley confirmed the prospectivity of the area by intersecting a sequence of strongly strong propylitic and epidote- chlorite altered volcanoclastic, and polymictic conglomerate rocks interpreted to be Ordovician – age Raggatt Volcanics similar to the host rocks seen at the Northparkes deposit.
FI2079 also intersected a zone of steeply dipping (near vertical) fault breccias assaying 10m @800ppm copper from 97m in a younger cover sequence above the Raggatt Volcanics bedrock that may represent later leakage (remobilisation) of copper mineralization from a deeper source.
Subsequent reprocessing of geophysical data highlighted a cluster of magnetic features (within a two sq. km area) adjacent to FI2079 and FI2081 that are interpreted to be intrusive rock bodies that could be the source of the copper anomalism seen in the drillholes.
In January 2022, Rimfire was awarded A$185,675 by the Department of Regional NSW, Mining, Exploration and Geoscience group under the competitive, peer reviewed New Frontiers Cooperative Drilling Grant programme. The funding will be used to partially offset the cost of drilling at the Valley.
As part of the current programme Rimfire will drill three RC pre-collared diamond holes (~1,000m) to directly test the magnetic features and determine whether they are the source of the shallow copper anomalism, with a fourth hole (RC only) potentially to be drilled to the southeast, to test a shallow aeromagnetic target which may represent a further occurrence of prospective Ordovician age volcanic rocks.
The drilling programme will take approximately two months to complete.
For further information please visit: https://rimfire.com.au/
