Collective encounters high-grade gold in Colombia

Canadian explorer Collective Mining (TSX, NYSE: CNL) expanded the mineralized area at Colombia’s Guayabales project as it released assay results from six new drill holes. The stock jumped.

Hole APC-122 in the project’s Apollo system cut 397.5 metres grading 1.2 grams gold per tonne, 60 grams silver, 0.33% copper and 0.07% tungsten from surface, Collective said Monday in a statement. This included about 58 metres at 2.05 grams gold, 39 grams silver, 0.24% copper and 0.34% tungsten from 17 metres downhole and almost 35 metres grading 3.8 grams gold, 27 grams silver and 0.07% copper from 348 metres depth.

Toronto-based Collective has nine drill rigs operating as part of a fully funded 70,000-metre drill program for 2025 – the largest in company history – at Guayabales and the nearby San Antonio project. Drill intercepts to date have expanded the volume of the shallow mineralized area by about 5%, Collective said.

“We view the results as positive for Collective shares as they help to further de-risk the upper portion of the deposit, expanding the mineralized area,” Scotia Capital mining analyst Ovais Habib said in a note. “We look forward to the results of additional exploration efforts throughout the balance of 2025.”

Collective shares rose 5.1% to $14.03 in Toronto Monday morning, giving the company a market value of about $1.2 billion. The stock has traded between $3.15 and $16.45 in the past year.

Continental team

Led by Continental Gold’s former management team, which discovered and built Colombia’s largest gold mine before being acquired by China’s Zijin Mining Group for $1.4 billion in 2020, Collective is focusing exploration efforts on large-scale copper-gold porphyry systems in the South American country. Its flagship Guayabales project is located about 80 km south of Medellin.

The project sits in Colombia’s Middle Cauca belt, a region with more than 500 years of mining history and numerous active operations nearby, like Aris Mining’s (TSX: ARIS; NYSE: ARMN) Marmato gold mine. Despite its location in this well-endowed district, Guayabales itself is a greenfield exploration project, with no prior mining on site.

Collective is aiming for new discoveries across a series of porphyry and breccia systems – including Apollo, the most advanced of the site’s 13 targets. Apollo, which begins at surface, is strongly mineralized over 1,200 vertical metres and open at depth, according to the company.

Other highlight holes relayed Monday included APC-119, which cut 135.2 metres grading 0.66 gram gold per tonne, 50 grams silver, 0.67% copper and 0.15% tungsten from 1.7 metres depth. Hole APC-121, meanwhile, intersected 68.3 metres at 1.16 grams gold, 12 grams silver, 0.18% copper and 0.01% tungsten from 42.5 metres downhole.

Shallow mineralization

Drilling at Guayabales is focusing on defining the shallow mineralization, high-grade sub-zones, expanding the high-grade Ramp zone at depth and testing a series of Apollo look-alike gravity targets.

Two deep capacity rigs are being mobilized to test the Ramp zone, Collective said. The first of these rigs expected to start turning by early next month. About 129,500 metres of diamond drilling have been completed so far at Guayabales, including 91,000 metres at Apollo. There are 25 drill holes in the lab with assay results for most of these holes expected in the near term.

More than two-thirds of the 33-hole infill drill program has now been completed with assays still pending for eight holes. Collective will target an average drill hole spacing of 35 metres down to a vertical depth of 150 metres once the shallow drilling infill program has been completed.