LOCATION
Zambia
YEAR
Since February 2020
POTENTIAL
3 Targets
MINERALISATION
Copper/Gold
Castillo Copper is the sole shareholder of Zed, an Australian company that holds three highly-prospective exploration projects in Zambia, the second largest copper producer in Africa. The two priority targets, Mkushi and Luanshya, potentially have extensive mineralisation along known structures and are proximal to some of the world’s largest historic, producing copper mines.
EXPLORATION TARGETS
The projects are situated in Zambia’s renowned copper-belt.
Mkushi Project
The 100% owned Mkushi project surrounds the licence held by Shi Yang Group (SYG), which houses a high-grade copper deposit. The SYG mining operation is hosted along the northern trend of two NE-SW shear zone features 2-3km apart.
Castillo Copper has conducted an extensive portable XRF soil sampling survey and identified eight prospective follow-up targets associated with the shear zone features. The north shear zone – contained in SYG’s ground and currently being mined – was drill tested extensively for copper mineralisation in 2006 by previous owner African Eagle Resources. The south shear zone – comprising similar geological structures – intersects the Mkushi project delivering a ~4km strike priority target to test drill for copper mineralisation.
Historic drill results – North Shear on SYG-held ground:
- 47.1m @ 1.3% Cu from 25.6m
- 18.6m @2.5% Cu from 62m
- 5m @ 4.7% Cu from 42.7m
In late 2019, a comprehensive soil sampling campaign was completed around SYG’s operating mining lease. It comprised 1,126 data points and delivered the following outcomes:
- Five new, well-defined, anomalous areas identified by portable XRF with respective strike lengths ranging from 2-7km; and
- Relative to the Mushiwemba Copper Mine and artisanal pits along the northern high-grade shear zone, the five anomalous areas are located circa 2-7km SW-NE on the same over-riding system.
Luanshya Project
The Luanshya prospect is hosted along one of four known highly prospective mineralised regional features. Located along these features are world-class operations such as Moxico’s Mimbula Project (Total resource: 61Mt @ 1.18% Cu) and two of China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group’s (CNMC) three pit producing mine (Total reserves: 52.3Mt @ 1.26% Cu).
As can be seen in the image below, there are four NW-SE trendlines across the region that are ~5-10km wide and host numerous historic / current operating mines and deposits.
Most structural targets are in the vicinity where the trendline intersects the Lower Roan Formation, but copper mineralisation is associated with other rock formations – including CNMC’s three mines.
Surface sampling campaign
Using a portable XRF device, the team collected 765 soil samples from across the Luanshya Project which yielded very encouraging results including defining copper in-soil anomalies up to 2,600ppm Cu.
As a result, the geology team were able to clearly demarcate sharp boundaries that contains anomalous copper mineralisation over an extensive circa 6km strike event.
To further test the identified copper mineralisation along strike, the geology team dug five trenches with a total length of circa 1,500m to garner incremental insights. The next phase was the completion of an IP survey, which confirmed multiple high-quality targets for test drilling along the 6km copper strike.
Post the IP survey, the Zambia geology team reconciled the results of the geochemical and geophysical data and then announced further exploratory work on key targets on 6 December 2022.
North & South Lumwana Project
The North & South Lumwana Project is situated on a geological structure called the Mombezhi Dome.
The Mombezhi Dome, which is one of several in the “Domes” region in north-west Zambia, hosts a number of sizeable copper occurrences.
This includes Barrick Gold’s huge project, which produced 101,600t of copper in 2018 and has NI-43-101 Proven and Probable Reserves of 375Mt @ 0.6% Cu.
In addition, ~100km west of Lumwana N&S is First Quantum Minerals’ Sentinel Mine, which produced ~224,000t of copper in 2018, while output from its larger Kansanshi Mine (~200km east) was ~251,000t.
Mwansa Project
Located in the north-east region, the Mwansa Project is relatively under-explored, but delivers upside as it is prospective for copper, manganese and other base metals.