Atico hits high grades below El Roble workings

VANCOUVER — Atico Mining (ATY-V) has pulled some striking grades in its first drill results from the El Roble project in Colombia.

Underground drilling below the current mine workings yielded a 41-metre intercept grading 6.49% copper, 17.57 grams gold per tonne, and 13.26 grams silver per tonne in hole 4, while hole 1 also hit a 41-metre intercept but at grades of 6.54% copper, 1.82 grams gold, and 8.22 grams silver.

On news of the results Atico’s share price briefly doubled to 80¢ before closing up 16¢ or 40% at 56¢ with 847,000 shares traded. The company’s closing price puts it a penny shy of the 56¢ it closed at on April 20, its first day of trading on the venture.

Drill holes 1 and 4, along with hole 2 that hit 5.3 metres grading 1.71% copper, 1.76 grams gold and 2.1 grams silver and hole 3 that hit nothing of significance, are all part of a 16-hole, 2,000-metre drill program in and around the current El Roble mine workings. The program is designed to find additional massive sulphide bodies below the lowest current workings at the 2,000-metre level.

Hole 1 hit mineralization 108 metres below the 2,000 level, while hole 4 hit mineralization starting 61 metres downhole. Atico reports that both holes display vein stockwork veinlets and multiple phases of breccias, indicating that the 2,000-metre level is close to the interface between mound massive sulphide mineralization and the stockwork feeder zone.

The company went on to state that the geometry and zoning of the existing mineralization, coupled with the new intercepts, imply that only half of the massive sulphide mineralization, about 1.5 million tonnes, has been mined to date and that the potential for significant additional tonnage exists below the current mine workings.

Along with exploring around the current mine workings, Atico recently completed a 500-line-km helicopter-borne versatile time domain electromagnetic survey over a 10-km trend of favourable contact that extends north and south of the mine. The company expects results from the survey soon, which it will better define drill targets in an upcoming 7,500-metre regional surface drill program.

The El Roble property sits roughly three hours drive southwest of Medellin, at between 1,600 and 2,700 metres elevation. It’s estimated that between 1990 and 2011 the El Roble mine produced 1.5 million tonnes at 2.53% copper and 2.54 grams gold, though production numbers have been in decline.

Atico can earn 90% of the property by paying US$2.25 million over two years, US$1.2 million of which has been paid, and then a lump-sum payment of US$14 million by January 2013. The company can extend the lump-sum payment for a year by paying an extra US$1.2 million.