Black Bear Minerals identifies increasing silver grades from historic core at the Shafter project in Texas

• Historic core results continue to demonstrate higher-grade silver and polymetallic mineralisation
• Twin-hole drilling and historic core re-analysis returning high results
• Historic core review to be extended to all available legacy drill programs

Black Bear Minerals (ASX:BKB) is set to increase its review of historic drill core after receiving promising results for the Shafter silver project in Texas.

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The continuing re-sampling and check analysis is historic core review program for resource validation of the 17.5 million ounce (Moz) foreign mineral resource estimated (MRE) at Shafter.

Results from two more historic 2012-series underground diamond holes continue to show uplift in contained silver for drillhole intercepts compared to the original database.

CEO, Dennis Lindgren, said the results strengthen the company’s confidence in the quality of the Shafter mineralised system, with returns including 8.5m at 525 grams per tonne (g/t) silver with peak at 1,360 g/t silver, and elsewhere a 147% increase in contained silver from a historic intercept.

“In addition, we continue to see previously un-assayed polymetallic potential, with significant gold mineralisation as high as 0.7 g/t gold,” he said.

“We will continue to extend the historic core review across the broader resource footprint as we progress towards JORC conversion, MRE upgrade and rapid mine restart study.”

The process has involved site geologists assessing the historical core and cutting the remaining half-core into quarter cores for sampling at the same interval lengths recorded in the historical database, and, where necessary, cutting whole core to half core to extend sampling into the wall rock.

Core was re-measured to confirm sample intervals were correct and could be accurately replicated. In cases of ambiguity in which a sample boundary could not be confirmed, no sample was taken.

The results to date now provide data for seven drill holes and 174 comparable assay pairs, allowing a preliminary comparison between the historic dataset and the re-assay results from the same core intervals.

Recent grab and rock chip sampling by the company has shown that mineralisation at the project is polymetallic, including gold, zinc, lead and vanadium.

The company will now broaden check‐analysis across additional historic drill programs, where core is available and in suitable condition and extend re‐analysis coverage across the full MRE footprint.

BKB opened steady at 56¢. Mkt cap of $86.88M prior to markets opening.

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