Red Rock Resources plc said it intended to speed up progress towards drilling at its 80% owned copper-cobalt Luanshimba licence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The announcement followed further positive results from the ground geophysics programme at the site.
The natural resource development company said that the first two phases of the programme had now been completed.
These included collecting a 70.72 line-kilometres of magnetic data in December 2020 by a ground survey conducted on north-south lines with a 100m line spacing
During January 2021, Ronacher McKenzie Geoscience processed and interpreted the ground magnetic data.
Three magnetically anomalous areas – in the northwest, the east, and a magnetic high in the southwest – were observed.
Red Rock said that the southwest area coincided with zones of elevated soil geochemical copper and cobalt, and may coincide with a mapped fold nose with postulated congruent structures that resemble other significant copper-cobalt occurrences in the district
The company added that the southwest anomaly was considered the highest priority for a follow-up ground geophysics programme of induced polarisation (IP) due to begin shortly.
Plans for a 12 line-kilometre IP and resistivity programme comprising six 2 km lines across the three target areas may be extended to eight lines to ensure thorough testing of the targets.
IP/resistivity data would then be integrated with the magnetic and geochemical data to delineate immediate drill targets.
HISTORIC
“The pattern of good confirmatory results from this tenement continues, and our advisors are optimistic about the prospectivity,” said Red Rock chairman Andrew Bell.
“The geological setting of the southwest anomaly conforms to the structural pattern in which significant deposits have historically been found and the strongly anomalous geochemical results show the presence of copper and cobalt in the area.
“We must now move quickly towards the drill stage as the rainy season draws to a close.”
The Luanshimba project is situated 65km southeast of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi in Haut-Katanga, in a 420 hectare prospecting licence (PR13513) in the Congolese Copper Belt.