The latest round of drilling commenced the last month ;) “Right now we have a moderate to large zinc deposit with an inferred resource of 18.8 million tonnes at 8.2 % Zinc Equivalent. We want to grow that resource.” said Carman. “You need size. A big resource attracts the big mining companies, either for a buyout or a partnership because there are very few large zinc projects.”
“We’re very close to the size we need.” said Carman. However, Tinka has been constrained because its drilling permits had been limited to a small portion of the 150 km2 mineral claim block. “
We’ve been unable to drill test beyond the permit boundary. But, we are very close to getting drilling permits for an area three times the size, allowing us to drill for the first time the full prospective zinc zone. These permits run for the next four years.”
With an expanded permitted area Tinka plans to initially deploy two drills. “We’ll use one of the rigs to expand the existing resource with step-out holes and look for higher grade zones. The other rig will test zones where there has been no drilling to date. We flew the property with a helicopter magnetic geophysical survey earlier this year. We have very good geophysics and a number of targets to drill test.” said Carman. “We saw big magnetic anomalies and we think we have identified a porphyry. This may be the source intrusion for the base metal mineralization along trend.”
“We have established a five kilometer trend and we have only drilled 1.5 kilometers of that trend. It is wide open in all directions.” said Carman. The geophysical results were announced in a Tinka press release August 17, 2016.
As with any prospective mining operation the infrastructure is a key concern. “The Ayawilca property is only an hour away from a good paved highway. We have a power transmission line which runs right through the property.” All of which would make mine construction fairly straight forward.
Peru has come a long way from the Shining Path days of the 1990’s. Tinka has been diligent maintaining good relations with the local communities and doing everything it can to minimize the environmental impact of its operations.
In Carman’s experience, the rule of thumb for a zinc mine is that 10 million tons grading 10% zinc or better. “Ayawilca would be an underground mine.” said Carman. “And we should be able to use the high elevation to our advantage, accessing the zinc minerals via a horizontal adit. The zinc mineralization occurs from are 100 to 400 meters from surface but we could go into the side of the hill using down-valley access to minimize cost and the environmental impact.”
The next round of Tinka’s drilling is set to commence by early January 2017. “We want the project to hit critical mass in terms of size, so we are excited to commence drilling.” said Carman, “We want to get more high grade and have some really exciting targets that have never been drilled.”