Highlights

• Catalina Resources has completed air core drilling in the southern part of its E63/2046 tenement to identify lithium pegmatite potential and historical gold anomalies.
• The drill program intersected pegmatites in more holes than expected.
• E63/2048 has witnessed a cultural heritage survey, aimed at clearing access lines for in-fill auger drilling in early 2023.

Catalina Resources (ASX:CTN) has provided an encouraging update on drilling completed at its Dundas project. In November, the company announced the commencement of air core drilling at Dundas, which was completed in mid-December 2022.  

Drilling confirms pegmatites at Dundas

The company completed the drilling of 105 air core holes for 2684m. The drill program aimed to identify historical gold anomalies as well as potential for lithium pegmatite in the southern portion of tenement E63/2046.  

© 2022 Kalkine Media®, Data and image source: Company update

Pegmatites were intersected in many more drill holes than what the company anticipated. This development resulted in several drill holes to reach drilling refusal prior to hitting the planned depth.

Further, the drilling campaign indicated multiple pegmatite intervals covering tourmaline, beryl and other accessory minerals. Such occurrences are essential to recognising the mineralisation potential of pegmatite.

Image source: Company update

Image description: Pegmatite (white piles) intersected from several holes

The drill program also hit other rock types. This covered a wide sequence (400m) of calcareous, graphitic, and pyritic black shales, silts, and quartz sulphide veined schists. Given these rocks’ age, there might exist the potential for sediment-hosted base metal mineralisation including zinc, copper and lead of the Mt Isa type.

The road ahead

Catalina Resources is steered by its mission of exploration and development of projects related to gold, lithium, base metal, and iron ore.

The company has updated on its next steps in coming days:

• Catalina expects to receive gold and multi-element assays, for base metals, lithium, caesium, and rare earth elements in January 2023.
• The company has initiated the planning for a follow-up reverse circulation drilling at any of anomalous assays to be received.
• In November, a cultural heritage survey was conducted over Catalina’s Exploration Licence E63/2048 to clear access lines for in-fill auger drilling in early 2023.