Alien Metals announces new survey over Donovan 2

Minerals exploration and development company Alien Metals announced on Friday that, following the earn-in agreement with Capstone Mining over the Donovan 2 copper-gold project in Mexico, Capstone has commissioned a detailed close-spaced surface induced polarisation (IP) geophysical survey across the majority of the tenement.

The AIM-traded firm said the survey would add infill detail to the northern anomaly already defined by Alien, and act as an extension to historic geophysical work undertaken by Alien.

It said the IP survey would be in the order of about 25.2 line-kilometers over 15 lines of variable length.

The data acquisition was estimated to take around 25 days, with follow-up data interpretation taking a further “couple of weeks”.

Alien said the survey was being carried out by Zonge International of Arizona, which had “extensive experience” of working in Mexico.

The work was due to start imminently, with all necessary access rights for the target area provided.

Drilling was then expected to follow once the work was completed and fully interpreted.

“The company is extremely encouraged by the speed of progress by the excellent Capstone technical team to push ahead quickly on exploration of the project,” said Alien chief executive officer and technical director Bill Brodie Good.

“While knowing that Alien had planned to do a maiden drilling program Capstone considered that commissioning a more detailed ground IP survey to compliment historic work done by Alien while awaiting the necessary drill permitting would refine or reaffirm the existing drill targets.

“Capstone is managing the main elements of the program while Alien provides the necessary early stage on the ground support and help as required and we are looking forward to some enhanced results from this work.”

At 1257 GMT, shares in Alien Metals were down 3.4% at 1.38p.