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Toronto’s Kuya Silver is discovering new zones of silver veins in its re-exploration of the historic Cobalt mining camp.
High-grade silver is showing up in the assay results from a drilling program the company is running at its Silver Kings Project near the town of Cobalt.
Kuya is drilling on the northern part of its 16,000-hectare property, just south of the town, where eight mines produced 60 million ounces of silver between 1905 and 1950 around Kerr Lake.
The company has been stepping outside of areas that were previously mined in the early 1900s to find new mineralization in an area where Kuya made a bit of breakthrough last March with the discovery of a high-grade vein.
The specific exploration focus is on a prospect called Campbell-Crawford where the Angus Vein was discovered in March. It’s in a spot, close to the old mines, that hasn’t witnessed exploration in 40 years.
Kuya said it’s been finding closely grouped clusters of veins here that bear a similarity in structure to where mining took place more than 100 years ago.
One particular bit of drill core pulled from the Angus Vein produced a ‘bonanza’ grade of 15,372 grams per tonne of silver over 3.34 metres.
Kuya is now running a follow-up program and released some drill results this month.
The company said in a Jan. 11 news release that it’s identified at least six steeply dipping silver and cobalt veins plus a number of secondary veins down more than 200 metres in depth.
In the release, one standout assay from the new Toms Vein yielded 2,180 grams per tonne (70 ounces per ton) silver and 0.36 per per cent cobalt over 0.40 metres. Kuya said that’s from a wider mineralized zone assaying 199 grams per tonne (6.4 ounces per ton) over 7 metres.
Kuya arrived in Temiskaming in 2021 and gained ground through a partnership with Electra Battery Materials (formerly First Cobalt). The latter dropped out of the cobalt exploration business to pursue a nearby venture to refurbish and expand a cobalt refinery north of town.
The drill program is helping Kuya figure out the larger district-sized structural picture of how the silver veins intersect. The company is forming a geological model that can be applied across rest of the property.
At Campbell-Crawford, Kuya said it’s been encountering some high-grade mineralization 200 metres from surface, deeper than any historic mine shaft in the camp.
More drilling should zero in where larger and higher grade veins exist at depth.
In tying into what the company believes is an untapped high-grade system, Kuya sees an opportunity down the road to mine a series of small, high-grade deposits and create a hub-and-spoke operation with a centralized mill.
“When we first drilled the Angus Vein in March 2023, there was no doubt about the buried potential for new economic deposits at the Campbell-Crawford property," said David Lewis, Kuya’s vice-president of exploration, in a statement.
“We have now begun defining at least six E-W and NW-SE trending mineralized veins, plus smaller secondary veins, within a very tight area, and hints of other major veins have also been drilled.
"We are observing higher-grade silver and cobalt mineralization focused near flexed vein intersections, defining steep, cigar-shaped mineralized shoots, and there is potential at each of these major vein intersections for additional mineralized shoots.”
More drill results will be coming out this winter, including a test hole from an area to the west of Campbell-Crawford called Airgiod.
“Both the Campbell-Crawford and Airgiod areas remain extremely promising and high-priority exploration targets for Kuya Silver,” said Lewis.
Kuya’s other key project is in Peru where it’s preparing its Bethania silver mine project for production later this year.
