Argent Minerals Limited (ASX:ARD) has upgraded the silver equivalent contained metal resource to 100 million ounces at 120 g/t silver equivalent at the Kempfield Polymetallic Project in New South Wales.
The company has also revealed a zinc resource of 520,000 tonnes of zinc equivalent contained metal at 2% zinc equivalent.
The revised silver and new zinc contained metal equivalents signal a significant progress towards potential economic viability as Argent readies further drilling.
Highly mineralised geological terrane
The Kempfield Polymetallic Project is situated in the Lachlan Orogen, a richly mineralised geological terrane that extends from northern Queensland, New South Wales and through Victoria into Tasmania.
The Lachlan Orogen is host to one of the largest underground gold mines in the Southern Hemisphere, Newcrest’s (ASX:NCM) Cadia Valley Operations
READ: Argent Minerals achieves valuable milestone with metallurgical test work results
Argent’s recent test work successfully separated primary material from the Kempfield project into potentially marketable commercial grade zinc and lead concentrates also containing silver and gold.
Importantly, this supports Kempfield as an economically viable polymetallic project with zinc, silver, lead and gold revenue streams from separate saleable zinc and lead concentrates.
Notably, an industry-standard flotation process was used, implying potentially favourable future capital and operating costs.
The next steps for metallurgical testing are envisaged to include variability testing across the various mineralogical domains of the Kempfield deposit.