Black Bear Minerals confirms high-grade silver with gold At Shafter

• Significant silver results from follow-up re-analysis of historical drill core continues
• Re-analysis has confirmed polymetallic mineralisation
• Twin-hole drilling and historic core re-analysis returning higher contained silver
• Historic core review extended to all available legacy drill programs

Black Bear Minerals (ASX: BKB) has decided to include all available legacy drill material in its re-analysis of historical core from the Shafter project in Texas.

Results to date have continued to impress with promising silver and polymetallic mineralisation confirmed.

CEO, Dennis Lindgren, said Shafter continues to surprise on the upside.

“These latest results include 9.1 metres at 1,043 grams per tonne (g/t) silver with a peak of 2,990 g/t, while also identifying up to 0.8 g/t gold and base metals, largely absent from historic datasets,” Mr Lindgren said.

“With extensive historic core already on site, we have a significant catalyst to progressively build a more complete picture of the Shafter mineralised system as we advance the JORC resource work, Rapid Mine Restart Study and continue our extensive surface and underground exploration program.”

As a continuation of the re-sampling and check analysis of historic core program for resource validation of the 17.5 million ounce (Mom) foreign mineral resource estimate, the company has received results for two historic from-surface diamond holes, completed in 2012.

The results continue to show uplift in contained silver for drillhole intercepts compared to the original database, for example 9.1m at 1,043 g/t silver from 116.4m, including 0.6m at 2,990 g/t silver (re-assay)

This represents a +133% increase in silver grade for the internal interval, and a +30% increase in contained silver for the wider intercept, compared to the original intercept.

Notably, the results returned for drillhole S-12-403 show a considerably higher silver grade than those reported historically, warranting continued investigation into the historic dataset. The uplift of approximately five per cent silver grade in S-12-420 has helped confirm the tenor of historical silver mineralisation, while indicating potential for limited grade enhancement through modern analytical methods.

For all drillholes re-analysed since acquisition of the project by Black Bear Minerals, silver grade has increased for the broader intercepts when compared to the historically reported intercepts.

Black Bear Minerals is in the process of reviewing results from exploration drilling, historic core re-analysis, and twin drilling with a view to completing a maiden JORC MRE and progressing towards completion of the Rapid Mine Restart Study.

In addition to check analysis, the company is in the process of re-logging and sampling available historic core to better understand the distribution of all other significant commodities at the project, with a view to incorporating results into a future JORC MRE, in addition to silver.

BKB was up 1.68% to 60.5¢. Mkt cap $90.69M.

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