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Stavely strikes in the shallows

Drilling intersected grades of up to
40% copper within a 32m-wide zone
at the Thursday’s Gossan prospect,
part of Stavely’s namesake project
in western Victoria

tavely Minerals Ltd’s breakthrough cop- but is at 65m down-hole compared to Oak san comes a little over five years after
Sper-gold discovery at Thursday’s Gos- Dam 1,408m.” Cairns and fellow former Integra Mining
san in Victoria has been compared to the Morgans research consultant Chris directors Peter Ironside, Jennifer Murphy
much-vaunted Oak Dam find by BHP Ltd Brown had earlier declared “it’s going to be and the late Bill Plyley listed the company
over the border in South Australia. a wild ride, if you’re up for it” just hours after on the ASX.
The Chris Cairns-chaired explorer set Stavely’s discovery announcement on Sep- It appeared the market was beginning to
the market alight in late September when tember 26. lose faith in Stavely when the company’s
it announced a mouth-watering intercept On October 7, just three days before the share price dropped to 15c in mid-Septem-
of 32m @ 5.88% copper, 1 g/t gold and 58 company went into a trading halt for the ber amid Cairns offloading 6.5 million of his
g/t silver from 62m down-hole, from the first placement, Stavely reported its first step- own stock as part of a Family Court settle-
diamond hole targeting shallow structural- out hole – 160m along strike from the dis- ment.
ly-controlled mineralisation within the ultra- covery hole – had intersected 8m @ 9.69% However, Stavely’s fortunes quickly
mafic contact fault at Thursday’s Gossan, copper, 0.4 g/t gold and 16.8 g/t silver from turned when an inquisitive geologist sug-
part of the Stavely project, about 200km 177m, including 2m @ 17.3% copper, 0.57 gested the company should undertake
west of Melbourne. g/t gold and 13.1 g/t silver from 179m. shallow drilling at a site where historic data
Assaying of hole SMD050 also returned A second intercept returned 59m @ 1.8% indicated massive sulphides had been in-
12m @ 14.3% copper, 2.26 g/t gold and copper, 0.43 g/t gold and 15.4 g/t silver from tersected by a previous explorer.
145 g/t silver and 2m @ 40% copper, 3 g/t 98m down-hole, including 8.5m @ 4.38% “The recognition that we should be using
gold and 517 g/t silver. copper, 0.87 g/t gold and 32.7 g/t silver and a Magma/Butte high-grade structurally-
Shares in Stavely surged 258% on the 3m @ 5.66% copper, 0.29 g/t gold and 4.6 controlled mineralisation model for our ex-
day the discovery hole was announced and g/t silver. ploration drill targeting has been rewarded
continued to climb in the weeks that fol- Following the arrival of a second dia- with a spectacular success in the first
lowed, with the company’s stock peaking at mond rig to the project, a second step-out diamond hole drilled to evaluate a shallow
$1.40/share in mid-October. hole 40m along strike to the north-west was 500m-long target at the ultramafic contact
The exploration success enticed Stavely to be drilled, with results pending at the time fault,” Cairns said in an ASX statement.
to rattle the tin for $19.6 million via a share of print. “It’s not often in the career of an explor-
placement which came in heavily oversub- Stavely’s discovery at Thursday’s Gos- er that you see 40% copper grades over
scribed from sophisticated and institutional sub-metre intervals, let alone over 2m,
clients of Morgans Corporate Ltd (lead and those stunning copper numbers are
manager) and Hartleys Ltd (co-manager). accompanied by very significant gold and
In a subsequent research note to inves- silver values as well.
tors, Morgans drew comparisons between “This new model has significantly ex-
Stavely’s find and Oak Dam, about 65km panded our ‘search space’ and a number of
south-east of BHP’s prolific Olympic Dam previous shallow historical aircore and RC
operations. intercepts of massive sulphides are clear-
The Oak Dam discovery hole returned ly much more significant than previously
44m @ 5.77% copper and 1.2 g/t gold thought and are now considered to be high-
from 1,408m down-hole. Fourteen holes priority targets for diamond drill testing.”
totalling 12,441m have been drilled at the Stavely’s preliminary drilling results at
prospect which is also 45km north-east of Thursday’s Gossan have also been com-
Oz Minerals Ltd’s upcoming Carrapateena pared to the DeGrussa copper discovery
mine. which proved to be a company-maker for
“Oak Dam puts Stavely copper drilling Sandfire Resources NL.
into context,” Morgans said in the research
note. – Michael Washbourne
“It is similar tenor of copper and gold
Chris Cairns

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