Europa Metals pleased with increased resource estimate at Toral

European lead-zinc explorer Europa Metals announced on Thursday that, further to its recent re-logging programme of certain historical core from its 100%-owned Toral lead-zinc-silver project in northern Spain, an updated independent mineral resource estimate had been completed for the project reporting increased tonnage and levels of contained metals.

The AIM-traded firm said re-logging of the historic drill core held at the National Litoteca resulted in “significantly” higher bulk density measurements than those used for the maiden resource estimate completed November 2017 and January, as it had announced on 6 February.

It said the increase in bulk density values applied to samples and their spatial distribution resulted in a “material change” to the estimation of the resource.

Ore tonnages were calculated by volume estimated from solid models, developed from mapping and drilling information multiplied by rock density.

The updated mineral resource estimate for the Toral lead-zinc-silver deposit comprised 19Mt at 6.9% Zn equivalent and 24g/t Ag; 720,000 tonnes of zinc, 570,000 tonnes of lead and 14 million ounces of silver.

Europa said that compared “favourably” with the maiden mineral resource estimate announced on 6 February, which contained 16Mt at 6.9% Zn equivalent and 25g/t Ag; 670,000 tonnes of zinc, 540,000 tonnes of lead and 13 million ounces of silver.

“The significant increases in estimated contained lead, zinc and silver within our Toral Project has been delivered by the Europa Metals team through highly focussed and cost-effective work,” said executive director Laurence Read.

“A 19% increase in zinc equivalent tonnes has been achieved and we have been particularly pleased that the new data sets have integrated very well into our existing model.

“In addition to our ongoing scoping study work and drill campaign at Toral, the team is continuing to analyse the recent information obtained from the historic core in order to provide new insight into the structure of the deposit.”

Myles Campion, executive and technical director at Europa, added that the company’s team had done an “excellent job” in utilising the information obtained from examining the historic core stored at the National Litoteca and extracting the most from it.

“Our concerted effort to re-log the core is already showing significant results and I look forward to further geological interpretation over the coming months as we integrate our various information sources,” Campion commented.