QMines Drilling Reveals Higher-Grade Zone Beneath Mt Chalmers Pit

Pontoon Holes Beat the Existing Resource Model

QMines Limited (ASX:QML) has received its first assays from drilling beneath the flooded Mt Chalmers open pit, and both holes returned grades above the company’s 2024 Mineral Resource model. Hole 26MCDD025 averaged 1.31% CuEq over 43.7 metres from 23.3 metres, versus 1.10% modelled, while hole 26MCDD027 averaged 0.99% CuEq over 24.3 metres from 42.7 metres, against 0.84% in the model.

That is close to 20% above modelled grades in both cases, although the comparison is based on downhole intervals rather than confirmed true widths. The company says the two holes, drilled 32 metres apart near the centre of the pit lake, are the first modern tests of an area that has relied largely on historical drilling.

The result extends a run of encouraging Mt Chalmers drilling, following the company’s earlier September Mt Chalmers drilling, which reported broad copper and high-grade polymetallic intersections ahead of the barge program.

High-Grade Polymetallic Lens Sits at the Pit Floor

The standout interval came from 26MCDD025, which returned 16.7 metres at 1.04% copper, 1.16 grams per tonne gold and 26g/t silver from the first bedrock core recovered. Within it was 6.7 metres at 2.07% copper, 2.37g/t gold and 60g/t silver, including a 2.7-metre zinc-lead-gold-silver lens grading 5.25% zinc, 3.04% lead, 4.44g/t gold, 109g/t silver and 1.29% copper.

That lens sits immediately beneath the pit floor and above a stronger copper zone, which returned 3.0 metres at 3.15% copper, 1.15g/t gold and 31g/t silver. QMines says the vertical arrangement is consistent with the metal zonation commonly seen in Kuroko-style volcanic-hosted massive sulphide systems, though the drilling is too limited to establish the lens’s continuity or geometry.

Second Hole Confirms Copper-Gold Mineralisation

Hole 26MCDD027, 32 metres southeast of 26MCDD025, intersected 11.3 metres at 1.32% copper, 0.43g/t gold and 11g/t silver from 42.7 metres. The interval included 8.3 metres at 1.64% copper and 3.3 metres at 2.70% copper, 0.59g/t gold and 16g/t silver.

The two holes also began in mineralisation at the first recovered bedrock core. That is potentially useful for understanding the near-pit-floor zone, but it creates an important qualification: the upper mineralisation contacts are not constrained because the ground was broken and partly clay-altered, and the reported lengths remain downhole measurements.

37 Assays and a Third Rig Remain in the Pipeline

QMines says assays are pending for a further 37 holes totalling 2,985 metres, while a third drill rig has started work. Seven completed pontoon holes are currently at the laboratory, and the results are intended to feed into geological modelling, geometallurgical testwork and the next Mineral Resource update.

The scale of that backlog makes the next batch of assays more important than these two holes alone. The current results show local grade support beneath the pit, but they do not yet establish resource continuity, mining widths, metallurgical recoveries or a change to the existing resource and reserve estimates. CuEq comparisons also use company-defined prices and recoveries, exclude lead and should not be read as a new economic estimate.