“Cornish Metals” or the “Company”, is pleased to report that it has commenced diamond drilling at its United Downs copper-tin project in Cornwall UK. As stated previously, the objective of the drilling programme is to follow-up the high-grade copper-tin mineralisation in drill hole GWDD-002 that intersected 14.69 metres (“m”) at 8.45% copper (“Cu”) and 1.19% tin (“Sn”) (see news release dated April 6, 2020).
The drilling programme has been contracted to Priority Drilling Ltd., under the supervision of Cornish Metals’ geological team; and
The drill programme will be run with full COVID safe guidelines, policies and procedures in place.
Richard Williams, CEO of Cornish Metals, stated, “We are all very excited to start this drill programme, following on from our successful AIM listing. The first phase of the programme will focus on tracing the high-grade copper-tin structure along strike to determine its full extent.”
ABOUT CORNISH METALS
Cornish Metals completed the acquisition of the South Crofty tin and United Downs copper / tin projects, plus additional mineral rights located in Cornwall, UK, in July 2016 (see Company news release dated July 12, 2016). The additional mineral rights cover an area of approximately 15,000 hectares and are distributed throughout Cornwall. Some of these mineral rights cover old mines that were historically worked for copper, tin, zinc, and tungsten.
The United Downs copper-tin project is located in the historic Gwennap mining district, which was an area of high grade copper mining in the 1700s and 1800s (United and Consolidated Mines). More recently, the Wheal Jane mine (immediately east of the United Downs project) and Mount Wellington mine (within the United Downs project area) were in production up until 1991 and 1978, respectively. All of the mines in the vicinity were underground operations, extending up to approximately 500m below surface. Mineralisation remains open to depth beneath these mines, as evidenced by drilling results from GWDD-002 in 2020, which intersected 4.04m grading 4.4% Cu and 2.06% Sn at a downhole depth of 638.85m – 642.89m beneath the United Mine (see news release dated November 18, 2020).
The South Crofty project covers the former producing South Crofty tin mine located beneath the towns of Pool and Camborne, Cornwall. South Crofty mine closed in 1998 following over 400 years of continuous production. Since acquiring the project in 2016, Cornish Metals has completed and published maiden NI 43-101 mineral resources for South Crofty using the vast archive of historical production data and more recent drilling completed between 2007 and 2013. In 2017, Cornish Metals completed a Preliminary Economic Assessment that demonstrated the economic viability of re-opening the mine. Additionally, Cornish Metals has undertaken extensive pilot-scale water treatment trials and successfully applied for and received the necessary environmental permits to abstract, treat and discharge mine water in order to dewater the mine. Planning permissions for the operation of the mine and re-development of the surface facilities have been secured and construction of the water treatment plant foundations commenced. The dewatering pumps, variable speed drives and new high-voltage power supply have been delivered to site.