By: OrePulse

Prospect Resources said this week it had recorded high-grade copper assays from a step-out drill hole at Nyungu Central, part of its Mumbezhi Copper Project in northwestern Zambia, with some of the best intercepts falling in zones that carried no defined mineral resource.

The results came from Phase 3 drilling at Nyungu Central, where the company held a 90% interest in the wider Mumbezhi project. Hole NCDD052 was originally designed to test for copper mineralization up-dip from existing holes at the deposit and returned 32.8 meters grading 0.54% copper from a depth of 28 meters.

After that initial result, the company extended the hole to test airborne electromagnetic anomalies identified at greater depth. The extension intersected two further zones of higher-grade copper mineralization that lay outside Nyungu Central's existing resource envelope: 24 meters at 0.78% copper and 20 meters at 0.91% copper. Neither zone had previously been assigned a mineral resource.

Prospect Resources said the mineralization in the new zones appeared to surround a thick mafic intrusive rock, described as an amphibolite, that resembled a separate lobe of the same intrusive identified about 450 meters to the southeast. The company reallocated extensional diamond drilling meters from the broader Phase 3 program to follow up the newly identified eastern flank of the deposit, with assay results from several additional holes still pending.

Sam Hosack, Prospect Resources' managing director and chief executive, said the hole "has dramatically opened up the prospectivity of a substantial area on the eastern margin of our flagship Nyungu Central deposit." Hosack said the company had "responded to this new opportunity by re-allocating extensional diamond metres to the current drilling campaign at Nyungu Central."

Separately, the company re-entered an earlier hole, NCDD003, to test for mineralization at greater depth. That hole returned 12.7 meters grading 0.67% copper from a depth of 511 meters. Prospect Resources said the result suggested the mineralized system at Nyungu Central extended further than previously modeled, and that it remained open both at depth and up-plunge to the south.

Assay results from a separate batch of infill holes, NCDD042, NCDD043, NCDD044, NCDD046 and NCDD047, also returned additional copper intersections, some of which included minor cobalt and gold alongside the copper mineralization. The company said assays from roughly 25 more diamond holes drilled during the campaign remained pending.

The latest intercepts were generated alongside a wider regional exploration program the company was running in parallel with the Phase 3 drilling at Nyungu Central. Prospect Resources did not disclose the identity of the holder of the remaining 10% interest in the Mumbezhi Copper Project.

Prospect Resources said the new results, together with the outstanding assays, would feed into an updated mineral resource estimate for Nyungu Central. That update was expected ahead of a scoping study for the broader Mumbezhi Copper Project, which the company had scheduled for the first quarter of 2027.