ECR Minerals PLC (AIM: ECR) has announced a shift in its exploration activities towards North Queensland due to lukewarm results from its Victoria operations.
Andrew Haythorpe, CEO of ECR Minerals, expressed mixed feelings about the results from their drilling programs in Victoria. Despite finally obtaining assay results, he admitted they didn’t meet expectations. To mitigate such situations in future, the company will employ cost-effective preliminary work like soil geochemistry and mapping to evaluate prospects before any drilling takes place. This strategy will be applied to future explorations in both Queensland and Victoria.
Haythorpe pointed out that exploration and drilling prospects in Queensland seem more favourable due to their better width and consistency, compared to the company’s past projects in Victoria. He made it clear that ongoing work results in Victoria will be benchmarked against anticipated results in Queensland.
ECR Minerals, an Australian gold exploration and development firm, holds full ownership of three exploration licenses in Victoria: EL006184 (Creswick), EL5433 (Blue Moon), and EL7484 (Tambo North).
The latest drill results from the Blue Moon Prospect at Bailieston suggested limited grade expansion at deeper levels. However, a noteworthy finding of 9 meters at 0.56 grams per ton (g/t) gold (Au) was recorded from a depth of 83.2 meters in hole BBMDD012.
At Creswick’s Brewery Lane site, four-diamond holes yielded promising results, including 1 meter at 4.29 g/t Au from a 94.8-meter depth in hole CSD016. Even with these favourable outcomes, ECR Minerals has chosen to halt exploration drilling at Brewery Lane for the rest of the year due to limited investment interest in junior gold exploration companies.
In Eastern Victoria, the company has initiated on-ground work in the Tambo River area. Early investigations within the Tambo tenements have shown potential, with positive visual findings and sulphides present within quartz veins. The company expects to release initial results in the near future.
As for future plans, ECR Minerals is beginning fieldwork at the Lolworth Project in North Queensland. Early results from the previous year’s field season have unveiled promising gold, niobium, and tantalum anomalies, suggesting a wider area of diverse mineralisation. The company aims to pinpoint several drilling targets at Lolworth by year’s end.
Additionally, ECR Minerals is set to start work at the Hurricane Project in North Queensland. A recently completed LIDAR aerial mapping survey will assist in identifying and testing quartz-breccia outcrops, which have not been drilled before. The company has stated that its geologists will be on-site starting from June 2023, and the initial drilling at Hurricane is planned for the latter half of the year, contingent on satisfactory progress.
