Sun Metals up 47% on Stardust drill results

Sun Metals Corp. [SUNM-TSXV] shares rallied Thursday after the company released impressive drill results from its Stardust project in northcentral British Columbia.

The company announced that drilling into a new extension of the Canyon Creek Skarn zone at the Stardust project has returned the thickest and richest mineralization ever intersected at the project.  “Sun Metals believes that drilling is successfully tracking a major mineralizing fluid pathway towards the heart of this high-grade system,” the company said in a press release.

Diamond drill hole 18-SD-421 intersected 36.50 metres of mineralization, grading 3.89% copper, 4.47 g/t gold and 84.6 g/t silver. This includes higher grade intervals of 5.55 metres, grading 6.28% copper, 7.01 g/t gold and 202.1 g/t silver and a second interval of 6.80 metres grading 8.52% copper, 11.17 g/t gold and 162.0 g/t silver.

Downhole from this intercept, drilling intersected another zone of skarn alteration with visible sulphide mineralization. Assays from the lower section of the mineralized skarn extension are pending.

Meanwhile, investors responded to Thursday’s news release by sending the shares up 46.88% or $0.075 to 23.5 cents on volume of 1.8 million. That compares to the 52-week range of 12 cents and 40 cents.

The company said DDH18-SD-421 has intersected significantly longer and higher-grade intervals of mineralization than has ever been observed in the 406 drill holes (approximately 80,000 metres) of historic Stardust drilling. The average length of intercepts comprising Stardust’s NI 43-101 resource is 4.3 meters, the company said.

The Stardust project is Sun Metals’ flagship project. It is a high grade polymetallic Carbonate Replacement Deposit with a rich history. According to a NI 43-101-compliant resource estimate, the Canyon Creek copper-gold skarn zone at Stardust contains an indicated resource of 985,000 tonnes, grading 1.34% copper, 0.62% zinc, 1.59 g/t gold, 36.8 g/t silver and 2.92% copper equivalent. On top of that is an inferred resource of 1.98 million tonnes, grading 1.24% copper, 0.14% zinc, 1.72 g/t gold, 30.5 g/t silver or 2.65% copper equivalent.

“We have intersected the strongest mineralization ever observed at Stardust and this drill hole is a game changer for the project and the district,” said Sun Metals President and CEO Steve Robertson. “We have crossed into a new area of mineralization that has not been tested previously,” he said.

Robertson went on to say that the mineralization is stronger and more pervasive providing support that exploration crews are moving in the right direction to find more of these longer intercepts of consistently higher grade mineralization.

The company believes this drilling has revealed the distinct pattern of encountering large bodies of more persistent and higher-grade mineralization closer to the source of the mineralizing fluids that formed the skarn system.