Materials

Gold, gold, gold—Bastion Minerals hits more high grades at Chilean Capote project

Wed 09 Nov 22, 2:50pm (AEDT)
A collection of gold nuggets against a black background with one specimen in the foreground
Source: iStock

Key Points

  • Bastion hits another round of high-grade gold in brief core intercepts
  • Company soon to kickstart its Cometa copper-gold play, nearby Capote
  • Company also assaying material for lithium, just in case it can find some of that, too

Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO) has hit yet more pockets of high-grade gold on-site its Chile-based Capote exploration project, in an ongoing drilling campaign that kicked off back in August

Reporting another batch of brief core equivalent intervals, the company continues to shore up confidence in the potential for commercial development of Capote. 

Investor information provider Undervalued Equity classifies high grade gold as that in concentrations over five grams of gold per tonne of ore (5g/t). Many Australian projects boasting 4g/t grades are also widely accepted as high grade. 

Bastion today reports: 

  • 01m @ 7.73g/t gold from 132m depth 

  • 09m @ 2.52g/t gold from 42m depth

  • 01m @ 10.83g/t gold from 49m depth 

  • 02m @ 5.00g/t gold from 49m depth 

Previous results from September include: 

  • 04.6m @ 2.59g/t gold from 55m depth 

  • 03.6m @ 3.06g/t gold from 55m depth 

And the company’s early success in August included: 

  • 1.6m @ 9.6g/t at 58.4m depth

  • 1.1m @ 3.9g/t at 80.9m depth

All in all, it’s clear by now that gold is present at Capote. The question is how to get it out, at scale, in a fashion that allows the company (and shareholders) to make profit. That, or, sell it to someone who can. 

Another project coming up 

Worth noting is that Bastion Minerals is also gearing up to kickstart a second project in Chile, located in the same region as Capote, called Cometa. 

Cometa is a copper play with IOCG style copper-gold mineralisation (according to Bastion) with a high potential for porphyry discovery. 

And, like every other explorer on the ASX right now, Bastion is also putting its feelers out to see if it can’t find some lithium. Shocking. 

Local vein system a boon: Management 

“We continue to make progress with our initial drill campaign at Capote. The Resurgimiento vein system is providing us with higher grades than previously reported,” Bastion chief Ross Landles said. 

“This is consistent with records as a high-grade gold district. Historical information, from the San Juan vein in the project, indicated it produced at a grade of 40 g/t gold for approximately 500,000 oz.” 

“These results, together with the significant near surface gold results already received, gives us further confidence in the maiden drilling campaign and has the team waiting eagerly for the outstanding gold and multi-element assays.”

BMO's news today has failed to land on anybody's radar, with shares flat
BMO's news today has failed to land on anybody's radar, with shares flat

 

Written By

Jonathon Davidson

Finance Writer

Jonathon is a journalism graduate and avid market watcher with exposure to governance, NGO and mining environments. He was most recently hired as an oil and gas specialist for a trade publication.

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