Caber drilling goes one-for-six

A 6-hole drill program mounted by Quebec government-owned Soquem has failed to intersect any significant sulphides on the Caber property, west of Matagami; however, the work did uncover significant mineralization on the Caber North property.

Soquem, which is earning a half-interest in the main Caber project from Southern Africa Minerals (SAF-T), drilled four holes to intersect the Key Tuffite, the rock unit that hosts the large Matagami deposits to the east. Previous drilling at Caber outlined a resource of 800,000 tonnes grading 10% zinc, 0.6% copper and 11 grams silver per tonne.

Indications from the recent holes and from earlier drilling suggest that the Key Tuffite may be faulted off in parts of the property. Several targets remain to be tested.

At Caber North, two holes were drilled to intersect extensions of the property’s A and B zones. Hole SAF01-98 cut a 3.4-metre length in the A zone that graded 3.7% copper. This mineralization was at the base of a 52.4-metre intersection of alternating zones of magnetite and massive pyrite and pyrrhotite, which graded an average of 0.9% zinc and 0.5% copper over its entire length.

At depth, the same hole intersected a 3.6-metre length of massive sulphides with 1.3% zinc and 1.3% copper, plus 11.2 grams silver per tonne. The mineralization lies down-plunge from the B zone at a vertical depth of about 300 metres.

A second hole was drilled to meet a structural extension of the B zone but intersected a diabase dyke instead. Southern Africa Minerals’ in-house estimate of the mineralization at Caber North — a highly preliminary one based on only 14 drill holes — calculates the four Caber North massive sulphide lenses to have 1.4 million tonnes grading 3.8% zinc and 1.8% copper, plus 17.4 grams silver per tonne.

Noranda (NOR-T) dropped its option on Caber in January 2000, but was succeeded by Soquem in June. Soquem can earn its half-interest in the main Caber property by spending $700,000 on exploration over four years. Southern Africa Minerals retains 100% of Caber North, but Soquem is drilling on the property under contract.