Rathdowney Resources (CVE:RTH) Tuesday unveiled its first NI 43-101 compliant estimate of “significant zinc-lead mineral resources” at its Project Olza in Poland, noting “clear potential to add substantial resources and make new discoveries."
The company said the results, based on 780 core holes drilled historically by the Polish State as well as confirmatory drilling in 175 core holes carried out by Rathdowney since June 2011, represent the first estimate carried out under modern standards, in compliance with Canadian regulations.
Holes used for the current estimate were drilled over a nine-square-kilometre area in the central part of the Olza property, and the company said other mineralized areas to the north, west and to the southeast have seen very little drilling.
"There are excellent opportunities to substantially increase the mineral resources," the company said.
Highlights from the estimate include inferred mineral resources of 21.2 million tonnes, grading 7.42 per cent zinc-lead for a contained 2.75 million pounds of zinc and 720 million pounds of lead, using a two-per-cent zinc cut off.
“This is an outstanding initial result for Project Olza and Rathdowney,” said president and CEO John Barry.
“These mineral resources occur in what is effectively a brownfield setting linked by rail to nearby third-party mine infrastructure, which provides a solid platform to move forward and consider scoping studies.
“In addition, this resource, although substantial, covers only a relatively minor part of the major mineralizing system on the Olza property.”
Barry added that the prospects offered by applying new exploration technology to the rest of the large property are compelling, and said large prospective areas outside the new resource footprint have either not been drilled or were drilled at inadequate densities for such deposits.
Rathdowney said its team is engaged in plans to further advance the project.
Using a three-per-cent zinc cutoff, inferred resources stand at 16.1 million tonnes, grading 8.63 per cent zinc-lead containing a total 2.46 million pounds of zinc and 588 million pounds of lead.
The explorer noted that mineralization occurs along a mineralized corridor with a total strike length of approximately 10 kilometres and width of up to 1 kilometre.
Rathdowney said the effective date of the estimate is May 2012, the date of the latest drilling used in estimation.
The Olza project is a Mississippi Valley Type (MVT) zinc-lead prospect in Poland's historic Silesian mining district, an area with extensive mining infrastructure including power and rail.
The project is also near a state-owned zinc smelter complex that is expected to have additional smelting capacity when the Pomorzany mine closes in the next three to five years.
The company's properties lie in the Upper Silesian Mining District, a region of MVT zinc-lead deposits, which has supported a sequence of long-life zinc mines in the post WW II era and where it has been granted two prospecting concessions and applied for a third, encompassing an area of 150 square kilometres.
The historical resource on all the properties is rather large at over 100 million tonnes, with a smaller but higher grade recent historical estimate from 2008 on Zawiercie, part of the Olza project, estimated to have 17 million tonnes in the C1+C2 category, grading 5.8 per cent zinc and 2.32 per cent lead.
Rathdowney also holds concessions in Ireland, where its technical team continues to integrate the geological data from the company's 2011 drill program with historical information as a way to define further targets for drill testing.
Initial exploration was heavily weighted toward soil geochemistry and drill testing with single drill-holes of isolated metal anomalies, but the focus has now moved toward the structural setting and the localizing of economic zinc deposits.
Separately, in early July Rathdowney said it would make a $4.4 million investment in Heatherdale Resources (CVE:HTR), gaining a "significant" interest in the Niblack copper-gold-zinc-silver project in southeastern Alaska.
Under the terms of the deal, Rathdowney will subscribe for 22 million common shares of Heatherdale, in a private placement, at a price of 20 Canadian cents per share.
The placement, which is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval, will result in the company holding about 18.4 per cent of Heatherdale.
Rathdowney noted that Niblack has "excellent operating characteristics and potential for development" over the next two years.
The private placement deal is part of the company's new plan to boost its near term development pipeline by gaining an interest in later stage projects, and to farm-out its early stage zinc projects in Ireland.
Rathdowney Resources is focused on finding and developing zinc-lead-silver deposits in the ore fields of Europe.
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