Aus Tin Mining Limited (ASX:ANW) CEO, Peter Williams provides an update on the company's drilling program at Mt Cobalt and Pembroke.
Jessica Amir: Thanks for tuning into the Finance News Network, I’m Jessica Amir. Joining us today from Aus Tin Mining Limited
(ASX:ANW) is CEO, Peter Williams. Peter, welcome back and thanks for joining us from Brisbane.
Peter Williams: Thanks Jess.
Jessica Amir: First up Peter, Aus Tin recently kicked off a drilling program at both Mt Cobalt and at Pembroke. Just briefly take us through what’s proposed, and what you’re looking to achieve?
Peter Williams: We’ve actually commenced the program; it’s going to comprise nine holes. We’re drilling three relatively shallow RC holes at each of Pembroke and Mt Cobalt, to test for the shear zones, that we’ve previously demonstrated contained high-grade cobalt and nickel asbolite. We got some of our best results from those zones earlier this year. We’ve actually completed the three RC holes at Pembroke and we’re just changing the rig over to diamond hole, to test a deeper target there. We’re going to also drill three deeper holes, one at Pembroke, two at Mt Cobalt. That’s going to be testing magnetic anomalies, which previously had been untested, so very exciting from an exploration perspective.
Jessica Amir: The results of your previous drilling at Pembroke sounded pretty interesting. Would you mind just elaborating a little further?
Peter Williams: We’ve drilled a total of 27 holes at Pembroke previously. Only three of those holes have actually gone deeper than 200 metres and the deepest is 300. Most holes there have intersected some level of mineralisation. But some of the notable results include from the upper area zone, 21 metres at 1.04 per cent copper and 2.09 grams per tonne of gold. And then below that, we had 26 metres at 0.44 per cent nickel and 224 ppm cobalt. But within that, there were some quite high-grade zones, including 1.7 per cent nickel and 0.6 per cent copper.
Now the geological model at Pembroke, it’s similar to that across the whole of the Black Snake, where we see various zones of mineralisation. We see a nickel cobalt oxide zone surface, which as I say, we drilled that at Mt Cobalt earlier this year. We then see a copper gold zone with the presence of lead and nickel – sorry lead and zinc. And then below that, we see the potential for nickel sulphide. So Pembroke, we’ve actually got that entire sequence at relatively shallow depths, with nickel sulphides reported in from around 70 metres.
Now if you look at the geophysics that we’ve done there, we see this anomalous zone of conductivity that we’ve generated from IP surveys, so depths around 250 metres. And then below that, we see the magnetic anomaly, which I guess is the target of the deeper hole, that we’re currently underway with.
Jessica Amir: Changing pace Peter, there have been recent reports of disruptions to cobalt supply out of the DRC. What are the potential implications for the cobalt price?
Peter Williams: Pretty interesting, just last week some reports came out of DRC that production from the major Kamoto mine, has been suspended because of uranium contamination. Now I’ve read and I understand that Glencore, who are operators of the mine, plan to install an S6W plant to address this contamination. But it won’t be installed until next year.
And as a consequence, it’s predicted that a relatively small surplus from a supply demand for 2019, could actually go from surplus into deficit. And if this was to occur, then it might be reasonable for the cobalt price to rise. Certainly more immediately, we’ve seen it have an impact in the last week, since it was announced. The cobalt price has risen to about 20 per cent, and it’s currently around $USD55,000 a tonne.
Jessica Amir: Peter Williams, thanks so much for the update.
Peter Williams: Thanks Jessica.
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