Cornish Metals has announced high-grade tin and copper results from its first batch of the South Crofty 2020 diamond drill programme in the village of Pool, Cornwall.
The Canadian miner reported that it had intersected multiple lode structures with the results showing high grade metal mineralisation.
The company has also intersected three additional lode structures deeper in hole SDD20-001, and is awaiting the results.
The dominant lode structures at South Crofty have strike lengths in excess of 3,500 metres and can be traced from the surface to a depth of at least 1,000 metres.
Richard Williams, chief executive of the Canadian company which was formerly called Strongbow Exploration, said it was an excellent start to the drill programme which had started in June 2020.
| Hole ID | From (m) | To (m) | Width (m) | True Width (m) | Sn % | Cu % | Sn Eq %* |
| SDD20-001 | 376.55 | 378.77 | 2.22 | 1.15 | 0.77 | 2.69 | 1.73 |
| including | 378.04 | 378.77 | 0.73 | 0.38 | 1.58 | 5.16 | 3.43 |
| And | 470.35 | 472.52 | 2.17 | 1.66 | 1.34 | ||
| including | 471.79 | 472.52 | 0.73 | 0.56 | 2.50 |
* Sn Eq grade calculated using current metal prices of $18,400 / t for Sn and $6,600 / t for Cu (Cornish Metals)
“[It] has been designed to demonstrate the ability to infill drill the current resource from surface, to intersect multiple lodes from single drill holes, and to show the potential exists to materially increase the current resource.
“In the context of tin deposits, these are high-grade intersects and are in line with the historic production grades from the South Crofty Mine and our mineral resource estimate.
“These results show we can achieve our objectives.”
South Crofty mine was a high-grade copper producer from the late 16th century until the mid-19th century.
It then became a high-grade tin producer, with more than 100,000 tonnes of tin metal produced between 1906 and 1998.
Cornish Metals bought the South Crofty tin project and additional mineral rights in Cornwall in July 2016.
The additional mineral rights cover some 15,000 hectares distributed throughout Cornwall.
Some of these mineral rights cover old mines that were historically worked for copper, tin, zinc, and tungsten.
The company holds an active mine permit for South Crofty, valid to 2071, and planning permission to build a new process plant and to dewater the mine.
The diamond drilling programme tests drill targets beneath mineralised veins or “lodes” that were mined until South Crofty closed in 1998.
The programme comprises up to 2,000 metres of diamond core drilling from a single surface parent hole and up to three daughter holes that will be wedged-off the parent hole.
South Crofty has two main rock types of metasediments, known locally as killas, under which lie granite.
The vast majority of copper has been mined from the killas, and nearly all tin produced at South Crofty has been mined from the underlying granite.
Tin mineralisation is also often associated with the copper mineralisation in the killas.