Does AZS have an orebody at Opasura? The company hope so and...

Does AZS have an orebody at Opasura? The company hope so and have reported some 50 (including Puma) drill holes so far but not said much about what they have - in part as it is too early and because they can't say too much until all the results are crunched and signed off on as Jorc compliant.

As there is some conjecture about the nature of the deposit some initial crunching of the data into visuals suits my way of trying to come to grips with it. I have done a few sections which made me wonder how the deposit hung together/or not.

Here is another way to look at the data from Opasura East that may be useful to some.

Take the grade and thickness of each intersection, multiply them and come up with a %(Zn+Pb) meter number which is normally plotted on a long section, or, for a flat deposit like Opasura, on the plan view.

This is such a plot:

I haven't tried to plot the location of intersections too accurately or made corrections for angled holes as IMO the difference is not material at this scale or style of study.

The %m values range from 0 to 366 (Hole 8 16.6m @22% Zn+Pb (at 70 degrees ~91% or 334 %m))

These numbers can then be contoured to show the distribution of mineralisation projected onto a plane - flat for Opasura.
This projection does not show vertical variations so needs to be used in conjunction with sections.



What do the numbers mean? Not easy to say as it depends on meters and grade.
For a rough guide something like this may be useful:
<10 pillar support/waste or when close to 10 ?send to low/medium grade stock pile ;
10-40 possible ore; either thin high grade or thicker lower grade. (1m @10 or 40%, vs 5m @ 2 or 8%);
>40 probable good ore. (4m @ 10% good but 8m @ 5% ?OK depending on economics).

Some intersections are continuous or combinations of close spaced stacked zones whereas some zones have too much low grade/waste between them to be combined. There are a few such holes reported and the upper intersections could have an impact on strip ratio if any OP mining were to take place.

There is a fairly well defined high grade zone which has been explored by the adits and confirmed by drilling to date.

It will be interesting to see if this high grade zone continues to the SW where holes such as 38, 53, 57, 59, 60 as well as 46 & 50 lie close to the trend. [Does this represent a zone of mineral control?]

Unless holes 28-31, 33 contain grade/thickness neither the northern nor southern (Holes 16, 18 20, 21, 24) shallow outcropping areas appear very prospective from current drilling. [Shoots down my earlier estimate for what I called the NE Block.]

The shallow area of Opasura East has been drilled on a fairly high density. To the SW spacing is much broader with most assays still to be announced. [There may be some previous drilling which can become JORC valid now some controls are in place.]

Initial results for Holes 23, 25, 26, and 36 show an interesting zone of mineralisation which may represent another "sweet spot" - relatively thin (so far) but high grade + open south and west at this stage.

Hole BDA-14R has 5.8m @ 0.28%Zn and 3.48%Pb! + 51 g/t Ag which suggests assays for holes 28-33 may still be pending.

Topography will have some control on any scallop/OP mining. Cover increases up slope with the 40m cover contour roughly as shown on this image.


As more assays become available this exercise can be continued. To date the central corridor and southern area (around Hole 36) look good.
The northern area will depend on drilling but wide spaced Puma holes BDA 6, 9R and 10 are not good indicators.

I would suspect AZS utilise a more sophisticated version of this approach with all sorts of different variables. How do Zn/Pb/Ag vary? Trace elements? Thickness contours etc etc.