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Olympio Metals Limited (ASX:OLY) (Olympio or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has signed an option to acquire 80% of the highly prospective Dufay Cu-Au Project on the Cadillac-Lake Larder Fault Zone, known as the ‘Cadillac Break’ (Dufay Option), in Canada.
Highlights
- Option to acquire 80% of the Dufay Copper-Gold Project from private vendors
- Located on the Cadillac Break, a regional structure associated with world class gold and copper mineralisation (>110 Moz Au1)
- Outcropping copper sulphides with numerous high grade rockchips up to 7.7% Cu
- 60km2 of tenure, covering 10km of strike of the Cadillac Break
- Multiple large Au-Cu mineral resources within 5km (Kerr-Addison2 >11Moz, Galloway3 >1.4 Moz)
- 35km west of world class Rouyn-Noranda Cu-Au province (VMS) and Horne Copper Smelter (Glencore)
- Excellent road and rail infrastructure with year round access
- Untested high priority IP anomaly (>1.2km) adjacent to syenite porphyry
- Underexplored property with no drilling since the 1980s
- Drilling approvals underway with drilling planned for January 2025
- Option represents a low cost strategic addition for Olympio
Olympio’s Managing Director, Sean Delaney, commented:
“The Dufay Project offers Olympio significant strike exposure to one of the world’s premier mineralised structures, the famed Cadillac Break. The Project offers a range of underexplored exploration targets, including high-grade copper showings that have never been drilled and compelling porphyry Cu-Au geophysical targets that remain untested.
“The Project is adjacent to numerous large gold-copper mineral resources, with a major highway through the project directly to the Rouyn-Noranda copper smelter 35km to the east. The Project has significant potential to host porphyry Cu-Au mineralisation, with exploration drilling planned to commence during the upcoming Canadian winter field season.”
This terrane bounding structure is associated with world class endowments of VMS and orogenic gold and copper mineralisation1. The Project is located 35km west of the Rouyn-Noranda mining centre and copper smelter in southwest Québec (Figure 3 and Figure 4).
Figure 1 Rock chip sampling and IP geophysical survey over 1VD regional magnetics
The Dufay Project contains numerous historical showings of chalcopyrite-rich quartz veining, including the Chevrier working (refer Figure 1 and Figure 2), which was mined briefly in the late 1920s. There has been limited drilling on the Property, with the majority of holes drilled pre-1945 and no drilling for the last 36 years.
Numerous high grade copper rock chips samples across many prospect locations within the tenure, including up to 7.66% at the Papitose Prospect and up to 6.78% at the Chevrier Prospect (Figure 1, Table 1).
Table 1 Copper results of selected rock chip samples (See Table 2 attached for full summary of sampling)
There are numerous elongated exposures of syenite porphyry mapped in the Dufay Project (Figure 1). The Dufay Project syenite occurs <4km south of the Renault Bay Syenite, which is directly associated with the >1.4 Moz Au-equivalent Galloway Project 4km to the north3 (Fokus Minerals) (Figure 2). An Induced Polarisation (IP) ground survey over the area was completed in 20114, and recorded a large (>1200m long), high conductivity anomaly typical of copper sulphide mineralization immediately adjacent to the syenite porphyry. Importantly, this compelling copper target has never been drilled.
The extensive IP anomaly, the Chevrier Prospect and the Papitose Prospect are immediate priority drill targets with the approvals process already underway for drilling planned to start in January 2025.
Figure 2 Dufay Project local mineralisation context. Hendricks drill intercept source5
Figure 3 Copper and Gold mineralisation along the Cadillac Break, southern Abitibi Sub-Province
Figure 4 Dufay Project Location
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
The Dufay Copper-Gold Project is located immediately south of the Cadillac-Lake Larder Fault Zone, or the Cadillac Break, a major crustal discontinuity separating the Archean Abitibi Greenstone sub-province to the north from the Pontiac sub-province to the south.
The gold endowment of the orogenic deposits located along the Cadillac Break totals approximately 111 Moz1. Multiple >1Moz gold projects occur within 5km of the Dufay Project , including Kerr-Addison (11 Moz2) and the recently increased Galloway Au-Cu mineral resource (Fokus Minerals, >1.4 Moz Au-equivalent3) (Refer Figure 2 and Figure 3). The Pontiac Sub-Province sediments host numerous gold mineral resources peripheral to the Cadillac Break, including the nearby Granada mineral resource (>1.0Moz)6 and the >10Moz Malartic deposit7.
The Cadillac Break is also linked to the Noranda Volcanic Complex, which hosts numerous VMS deposits (Cu-Au-Zn-Ag) including the Horne deposit (>1Mt Cu, 0.5Mt Ag, 9Moz Au production8; Refer Figure 3).
The Project is highly prospective for porphyry Au-Cu mineralisation and shear-hosted quartz- carbonate-pyrite lode gold mineralisation. The nearby Galloway gold deposit (<4 km to the north, Fokus Minerals) is strongly associated with a syenite intrusive, similar to those mapped within the Dufay tenure.
Dufay hosts numerous quartz vein-sulphide hosted copper-gold-silver prospects with strike extents to hundreds of metres. The Archaean host geology includes a wide variety of rock types, including metasediments, ultramafic talc-chlorite schists, porphyry/syenite, felsic to intermediate intrusives and gneisses, and Proterozoic dolerite dykes. Disseminated chalcopyrite mineralisation is widespread in selected areas examined by Olympio to-date, suggestive of a large pervasive mineralising system.
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This article includes content from Olympio Metals Limited, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
Maiden Measured Resource for the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina (HPA) Project, WA
- A maiden Measured Resource of 730,000 tonnes at 25.8% alumina (Al2O3) for a contained 189,000 tonnes of alumina has been defined at the Lake Hope HPA Project in Western Australia.
- The Measured Resource supports the first 15 years or more of proposed HPA production from Lake Hope. It will underpin a maiden Probable or Proven Reserve, subject to ongoing mining studies, test work, and economic studies to be completed as part of the Pre-Feasibility Study on Lake Hope.
- Impact aims to bring Lake Hope into production to deliver low-cost, high-margin end products to a rapidly expanding global market. Current prices for benchmark 4N HPA (99.99% Al2O3) and related products are more than US$20,000 per tonne.
- The Pre-Feasibility Study will be completed in Q1 2025 after the final reports from various contractors and consultants are received, which are expected in December and January.
- Following an agreement with the Federal government, the first monies from the recent $2.87 million grant for the CRC-P research and development project with CPC Engineering and Edith Cowan University to construct a pilot plant for Lake Hope will be received by the end of November, a few months ahead of schedule. This will accelerate the construction of the pilot plant.
The Measured Resource comprises 730,000 tonnes of lake clay at a grade of 25.8% alumina (aluminium oxide, Al2O3) for a contained 189,000 tonnes of alumina (Table A). It is part of a much larger resource that includes Indicated and Inferred Resources within a unique deposit of high-grade alumina hosted in extremely fine-grained evaporite and clay minerals in the top two metres of two small dry salt lakes in the Lake Hope playa system (West Lake and East Lake, Figure 3 and ASX Release March 21st 2023).
The Measured Resource will underpin a maiden Probable or Proven Reserve Statement for an initial mine life of at least 15 years at the proposed benchmark production rate of 10,000 tonnes per annum of High Purity Alumina. The Reserve Statement is subject to further mining, metallurgical test work and economic studies that are part of the ongoing PFS (ASX Release October 9th 2024).
The larger resource underpins a potentially much longer mine life of at least 25 years, as reported in the Scoping Study on Lake Hope. The study showed that the project had very robust economics, with an after-tax Net Present Value (NPV8) of A$1.3 billion and one of the lowest operating costs per tonne of HPA globally (ASX Release November 9th, 2023). Impact confirms that all material assumptions underpinning the production target and forecast financial information in the Scoping Study continue to apply.
Figure 1. Location of Lake Hope Project E63/2086
The Mineral Resource estimate is shown in Table A and is reported in accordance with the requirements of the JORC Code 2012 by resource consultants H and S Consultants Pty Ltd (HSC) of Brisbane, Queensland. All details relevant to the Resource Estimate are given below and in the JORC Tables 1, 2 and 3 at the end of this report. Drill hole information and assay data have been reported previously (ASX Release 19th June 2023).
Table A. Lake Hope Alumina Mineral Resources.
About 60% of the Measured Resource lies within West Lake, over which Impact recently pegged a Mining Lease Application (ASX Release August 12th, 2024). When required, further low-cost push-tube sampling of the lake can significantly increase the size of the measured resource (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Lake Hope showing the push tube sampling method used to drill out the resource and an example of the lake clay from the push tube showing excellent sample recovery.
The alumina block grade distribution for the resources is shown in Figure 2. The grade increases towards the centre of the lakes, offering an opportunity for preferential mining of the higher-grade material in the early stages of any future mine development. Initial geometallurgical studies examining the variability of the mineral assemblages across the lakes have also been completed, and these are being incorporated into the mining schedules being prepared for the PFS.
Figure 2. Percentage (%) Alumina Block Grade Distribution for the Lake Hope Mineral Resources (Drill hole collars are shown as circles.)
The new Mineral Resource Estimate will be incorporated, as per the JORC 2012 Code, into the Pre- Feasibility Study for Lake Hope, which is nearing completion. Final reports from the engineering and design studies, mining schedules, and mining cost estimates, as well as from other contractors and consultants, are awaited. Some of these are expected in mid-December, and accordingly, the PFS is expected to be completed in Q1 2025.
Early Access to the CRC-P Research and Development Grant Funding
Impact recently announced that, in collaboration with CPC Engineering and the Mineral Recovery Research Centre (MRRC) at Edith Cowan University, it had been awarded a $2.87 million grant to commercialise its innovative process for producing High-Purity Alumina from Lake Hope (ASX Release October 22nd, 2024).
The grant is provided under the Federal Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) program and is part of a more extensive research and development project designed to
provide Impact with the relevant information required to complete a Definitive Feasibility Study. A vital component of the grant funding will be to construct a pilot plant, which is an essential milestone for 2025, and this will provide consistent HPA samples for off-take and qualification trials.
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This article includes content from Impact Minerals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
