Group Eleven Resources (ZNG.V) released the results of two drill holes that were completed on its Ballinalack zinc-lead-silver project in Ireland. One hole was meant to gather more data and gain more insight of the structural controls of the mineralization and was the first ever hole to drill-test the Ballinalack fault below the historical resource estimate. The technical approach is very important as this project is – as far as we know – the only major zinc occurrence in Ireland with two underlying prospective horizons: the Waulsortian horizon and the Navan beds. Irish zinc deposits are usually only found in either the Waulsortian rock or the Navan Beds which host the giant Navan zinc mine owned and operated by Boliden just 50 kilometres towards the east.
The technical hole discovered that cross-faults are present across the historic estimate (7.7mt @ 6.3% Zn and 1.0% Pb – not compliant with NI 43-101) and that these faults may be significant in controlling mineralization (an important development as historic drill programs weren’t considering this possibility). This realization plus re-analysing historic zinc intercepts led Group Eleven to identify four high-priority Navan Beds targets. According to Group Eleven, the technical hole confirms historical drilling on the property to test the hanging wall of the Navan Beds was going too far down dip. This means that this target area remains virtually untested and that the other three targets have been only sparsely drilled so far. Follow-up drilling, therefore, opens up significant exploration upside.
The second hole was in part aiming to intersect a known area of zinc-lead-silver mineralization and was successful in doing so. The drill bit intersected 10.3 meters containing 10.58% Zn+Pb at a depth of just 60 meters down-hole. That’s a great result (the grade of this interval is approximately 50% higher than the average grade in the historical resource estimate), and on top of that, the silver grade came in pretty high as well, at 51.8 g/t (1.67 ounces per ton). That’s an important achievement as the historical drill programs at Ballinalack often didn’t assay the core for silver… It’s not unreasonable to expect Ballinalack getting a zinc-equivalent grade boost thanks to the silver.
The high-grade interval over 10 meters was intersected in the Waulsortian limestone (which is typical for Irish zinc deposits). The other reason to drill the second hole was to test the underlying Navan Bed zone – and it too was mineralized, albeit a bit weaker: the best interval there is 3.1 meters at 5.65% Zn+Pb and a few very short lead-heavy intervals.
With in excess of C$3M in cash on hand, Group Eleven is well-funded to continue to unlock the value of the mineral deposits in Ireland.
Go to Group Eleven’s website
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