Sun Silver (ASX:SS1) has detected antimony in a historic drill core pulled from its Maverick Springs acreage with pXRF readings up to 1.3% for the emerging critical mineral of interest.
China recently curbed exports of antimony, leading to a run on ASX companies with projects that contain instances of the critical mineral. I wrote about that late last month.
Geoscience Australia has previously noted antimony is at the ‘top’ of the national critical minerals (critmin) list, Southern Cross Gold once wrote that it’s the “second most metallic commodity” after the yellow metal.
The metal – used in many applications, including high-tech and defence end uses – is often found alongside silver-lead deposits. Its abundance in earth’s crust is tenfold larger than silver.
Now, Sun Silver is growing more confident it’s got an anomalous antimony system on-site its flagship silver project.
Part of that belief is backed by anomalous readings located 1.3km apart. Geotechs remain busy at work analysing that data. Five historical drill holes were scanned with pXRF, the highest grade came in at over 13,000ppm (1.3%).
“The presence of antimony across all holes tested to date warrants further investigation of the Antimony potential at Maverick Springs Project,” the company wrote on Tuesday.
“In response to the urgent U.S. demand for antimony due to upcoming Chinese export restrictions, we are actively working … to explore funding opportunities with the US Department of Defence,” SS1 ED Gerard O’Donovan said.
“This initiative positions us to advance the Maverick Springs Project and address the need within the US for this critical mineral.”
SS1 last traded at 59.5cps.