Alien Metals (UFO ) said an airborne magnetic survey will commence today over the Elizabeth Hill Project in Western Australia to drive new target generation across the Exploration Licence. The Project covers the original Mining Licence M47/342 which hosts the Elizabeth Hill Silver Mine, associated prospects, and the newly acquired exploration permit ELA47/4422, which is now known by a former name describing the area, the Munni Munni North tenement.
The minerals exploration and development company said the Aeromagnetic survey will aid in tying in existing prospects and historical data to aid in prioritising numerous existing targets while new targets could be defined from the company’s new geophysical survey.
Alien said it has already engaged Southern Geoscience Consultants (SGC) of Perth, WA, to provide and manage the acquisition, processing and interpretation of airborne magnetic, radiometric and digital elevation data over the Elizabeth Hill Project (Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Location of Elizabeth Hill Project, Pilbara, WA
(Source: Alien Metals)
From a detailed review of existing available data, it was decided to only fly over the eastern section of the project area as the western area was recently flown at the same line spacing and line direction with that data available to purchase at less than the cost of re-flying it.
Since its undertaking of the project, SGC have since confirmed that it can integrate both data sets into one larger unit that they can subsequently interpret as a single area.
Commenting on the survey, Chief Executive, Bill Brodie Good, “It is great that we can get this work underway at this time so over the coming weeks while field work is much more limited due to the cyclone season in the region we can keep working in the background.
Once we have the results and interpretation’s we can start developing priority targets to follow up in the field alongside the already planned trenching within the Mining Licence.”
He added, “The Company is excited about the potential to add significant value to the project and developing next stage exploration from the outcome and looks forward to updating the market of progress in due course.”
Figure 2: Existing coverage of project area with recorded historic airborne surveys (labels indicate line spacing/terrain clearance/line heading), SGC, December 2020
(Source: Alien Metals)
Figure 3: Elizabeth Hill Project Airborne survey area, the magenta polygon is covered by existing multi-client survey and the blue area is the new survey.
(Source: Alien Metals)
Shares in Alien Metals have performed strongly over the past 12 months from 0.2p in January 2020 to 1.1p today. However the shares have retreated strongly over the past three months from intraday high of 2.88p in October 2020. Positive Newsflow from UFO will be key to driving the shares upwards in 2021 and the Company clearly intends to start strongly with the collation of the airborne surveys, geological interpretations and geochemical results, the Company will be able to drive new target generation across Munni Munni North. With the Company hoping to have the final results and interpretations from this survey in mid to late February, it will be able to start planning the follow up field work going into the optimal field season in the region.
Reasons to Follow UFO
UFO’s portfolio of exploration stage assets includes volcanogenic massive sulphide style mineralisation (copper, zinc and lead), high-grade silver projects in Mexico and a 51% interest in two highly prospective iron ore projects in the Pilbara region in Australia.
The company said its portfolio may be expanded to include other minerals such as iron ore and lithium, and jurisdictions within Africa and Asia where its management has demonstrable expertise advancing assets in line with international reporting standards.
Expanding License Areas
In recent weeks, the company was granted a 208 km2 exploration licence by Ironbark Zinc surrounding the Citronen zinc-lead project, a high-grade metal project located in northern Greenland which is believed to be one of the world's largest undeveloped zinc-lead projects.
The minerals exploration and development company said the project holds a JORC resource of 131.1m tonnes @ 4.5% zinc and lead for 13bn pounds of contained zinc and lead metal.
The licence is valid until 31 December 2023 and continues UFO’s strategy of identifying counter-cyclical opportunities in first class mining jurisdictions with ‘excellent upside potential.’
"The Company and its advisers continue to assess new projects and identified an opportunity to secure an exploration footprint in northern Greenland on strike and adjacent to the world class undeveloped Citronen zinc-lead project,” said CEO, Bill Brodie Good.
IBK believes the projects offer an attractive entry into one of the world's premier silver belts and will soon start marketing them to a range of potential investors and project partners.
UFO said it will continue its efforts in exploring and developing the projects and simultaneously consider third party funding options to develop and mine the projects.
In other recent news, the company has also recently completed a detailed geological mapping and sampling programme at the Hamersley iron ore projects in Australia with field observations indicating that two of its prospects may be part of the same larger system.
The two projects, which have demonstrated “great potential” are located in the Hamersley Province which is known as one of the premier iron ore producing regions of the world.
Preliminary handheld XRF results are consistent with those observed in the 2019 field programme, with reported ranges of between 40% and 70% iron. Alien Metals has now commenced preparing a Program of Works ("POW") for submission ahead of drilling.
Meanwhile, North American advisor firm IBK Capital has commenced the marketing process for the Company's San Celso and Los Campos silver projects which are located in Mexico.
The process for the silver projects follows the successful earn-in transaction with Capstone Mining announced earlier in October 2020 regarding UFO’s Donovan 2 copper-gold project.
Acquisitions
UFO has executed an acquisition-led strategy headed by a high-quality geological team to build a strong portfolio of diversified assets including two recent acquisitions in 2019.
These include the Brockman and Hancock Ranges high-grade iron ore projects and the Elizabeth Hill Silver projects both located in the Pilbara region, Western Australia.
In addition to progressing its portfolio of assets and following its strategic review of its portfolio of silver and precious metals projects in Mexico, UFO has identified priority exploration targets within its 9 mining concessions which it is working to advance systematically.
The Company’s silver projects are in the Zacatecas State, Mexico’s largest silver producing state which produced over 190m oz of silver in 2018 alone accounting for 45% of the total silver production of Mexico for that year.