Dundee to test open pit potential at Armenian mine

Dundee Precious Metals (DPM-T) claims that its Shahumyan deposit in Armenia shows potential for an open pit mine.

Shahumyan is the polymetallic portion of the Kapan mine deposit in southeastern Armenia; the other portion is copper and known as Centralni.

Dundee plans to drill 13,600 metres in two phases on the property in order to attain a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource estimate. The company has bought three diamond drills and three reverse circulation drills to do so.

First off, Dundee plans to test Vein 5 with a starter pit drilling program where a 600-metre-long zone will be drilled out.

As it assesses the open pit potential, the company will try to identify locations for several small pits to supplement underground production to keep the Kapan mill running at its capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per year.

The Shahumyan underground mine is currently in operation and has a reserve estimate that is compliant with Armenian standards: 12 million tonnes grading 0.5% copper, 2 grams gold per tonne, 37 grams silver and 2.2% zinc.

Dundee has already begun drilling for the purpose of metallurgical testing and is currently building an assay facility which will be managed independently by SGS.Assays are being sent to SGS lab in Perth, Australia until then.

Highlights from the metallurgical samples included 48 metres grading 0.15 gram gold per tonne, 7 grams silver and 0.07 parts per million copper and 5.5 metres grading 0.44 gram gold, 27 grams silver and 0.06 ppm copper.

The company also reported two Vein 5 resource definition drill holes, which returned a 3 metre intersection grading 2.01 grams gold per tonne, 19 grams silver and 0.03 ppm copper and 89 metres grading 1.42 grams gold per tonne, 66 grams silver and 0.11 ppm copper.

Although at least 280,000 metres of diamond drilling, 33,000 metres of drive channel sampling and 32,000 metres of face sampling have been done over the past 50 or 60 years, no core samples were saved nor do any reference samples from the channel or face sampling exist.

Before buying its controlling interest in the property, Dundee says it tested 750 kg worth of 30 kg samples from the accessible parts of the Shahumyan mine, and used the data as an in-house reference.