Aftermath drills 408 g/t silver over 65.25 metres at Berenguela, Peru
Aftermath Silver Ltd. [AAG-TSXV; AAGFF-OTCQB] reported additional assay results from the diamond drill program at the 100%-optioned Berenguela silver-copper-manganese project located in the department of Puno in southern Peru. The company previously released assays for the first 20 holes of the program. The first results of Aftermath’s twinning of historic RC holes are included in this NR.
Highlights include 18.9 metres at 1,162 g/t silver and 1.12% copper in hole AFD-034 from 39.7 metres downhole. A high-grade copper intercept in hole AFD-029 which returned 20 metres at 268 g/t silver and 2.95% copper from 73.1 metres downhole. AFD-029 reported 97.60 metres of mineralization from surface at 188 g/t silver and 1.70% copper. Hole AFD-034 returned 65.25 metres of 408 g/t silver, 0.91% copper, 5.9% manganese and 0.54% zinc. All holes returned manganese and zinc credits.
Ralph Rushton, President, commented: “Drilling and sampling of this year’s core is now complete and we’ve submitted 63 holes to the assay lab. We continue to see select intervals with extremely high silver grades which correlate with elevated copper and manganese grades. The next few batches of holes are going to be particularly important for the planned resource estimate as they mostly twinned historic RC holes some of which had poor sample recovery and/or apparently encountered extensive voids. In a number of holes we’ve now recovered full core intersections where the historic RC program returned no samples. For example, hole BER005 drilled in 2004 returned a total of 11 metres of voids between 0 to 80 metres, but our drilling returned an average of 98% core recovery over a similar twinned intersection with voids totalling only 1.60 metres. Whilst it is still very early days, preliminary grade and intercept comparisons on this subset of twinned holes are very encouraging as we achieved parity or, in some cases, bettered the historic 2004/5 results. The new holes will be incorporated into the data base we are compiling for our resource estimate replacing their historic twin RC holes.”
The program was planned as a combination of resource verification, metallurgical sampling, and confirmation of some historical RC holes. Aftermath’s technical team is incorporating the new drilling into a revised geological interpretation of the Berenguela mineralization which will be used to complete a new NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate later in 2022. Historical mapping and resource modelling shows that the mineralization extends roughly 1,300 metres along strike (including a 100-metre length zone with historic open-pit mining but no drilling) with a width of 200 to 400 metres.
The first phase of Aftermath’s drill program at Berenguela was completed on May 17, 2022 with 63 diamond core holes for a total of 6,168 metres of drilling. Cutting and sampling of core was completed on May 30 and 5,630 metres has been cut and 5,485 metres sampled. 147 batches of samples, 4,700 drill samples in total plus 1,176 check samples, have been shipped to ALS’s lab in Arequipa.