Heliostar Metals (HSTR.V) isn’t wasting any time and just a few days after closing a private placement which allowed the company to add about C$7M to its treasury, it announced the assay results of two new holes drilled at Ana Paula. Both holes were excellent and while it feels pretty absurd; the hole with 104 meters containing 6.14 g/t gold was the weakest hole of the two.
Indeed, the headline result came from hole AP-23-297 which contained 9.06 g/t gold over a distance of just under 252 meters. And while this included some ultra-high intervals like 5 meters of 51 g/t gold and 9.9 meters containing 42.4 g/t gold, there is no smearing. Even if you’d take those two intervals out of the equation, the residual 227.05 meters still contained an average of 6.68 g/t gold. So while the two intervals with in excess of an ounce of gold per tonne of rock definitely boosted the average grade of the entire hole, they did not ‘carry’ the hole.
Looking at the location of the hole, it should not really come as a surprise to see the hole was mineralized as it was piercing through the known high-grade occurrence. And although we could argue this was ‘just an infill hole’ (which definitely confirmed the continuity of the mineralization), there appears to be more to it. The main bonus is the higher than expected grade. According to CEO Funk, the average grade encountered in the hole exceeded the grade predicted by the current resource model by approximately 33% so this definitely bodes well for further resource updates as hole 297 further improved the confidence in the mineralization and will likely provide a grade boost.
The location of hole AP-23-298 is also interesting as it further confirmed the presence of gold mineralization up plunge from the main high-grade underground panel. The 104.1 meters of 6.14 g/t gold (which, by the way, also exceeded the resource model prediction by almost 40%) was boosted by an interval of 19.5 meters containing 15.1 g/t gold but even if we would remove that interval from the equation, the residual interval of just under 84 meters still contains in excess of 4 g/t gold.
The company has now completed sixteen drill holes at Ana Paula but has only released the assay results from eight of those holes.
Disclosure: The author has no position in Heliostar Metals. Heliostar is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
