Collective Mining shares rise on high-grade Guayabales gold discovery

Collective Mining (TSXV: CNL; US-OTC: CNLMF) shares rose almost 10% Wednesday as the company announced the “most cumulative mineralization in drill holes completed to date” in the high-grade, copper-gold-silver porphyry-related Main Breccia discovery at its Guayabales project in Colombia.

Guayabales is located in the historic Colombian gold mining department of Caldas, about 300 km inland from Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast.

According to visual observations, step-out diamond drill hole APC-17 cut more than 70 metres of mineralization starting at 119 metres depth and another 545 metres of mineralization from 365 metres down to the end of the hole at 825 metres vertical, the Toronto-based company said in a news release. The hole terminated at 912.6 metres while still in mineralized breccia.

Collective Mining’s Guayabales gold project in Colombia. Credit: Collective Mining

Hole APC-22 intercepted three zones cutting more than 400 metres of total breccia mineralization. Two shallow zones located beneath surface outcrops and the initial 37-metre intercept started at 100 metres downhole, with the second shallow 19-metre intercept starting at 167 metres downhole, the company reports.

The deeper intercept at APC-22 started at 308 metres downhole and continued within mineralized porphyry-related angular breccia until the hole terminated at 734.8 metres.

Collective executive chairman Ari Sussman said the two holes are “incredibly exciting” because they have expanded the Main Breccia’s size at Apollo.

“Importantly, the system remains open to the north and northeast as both holes bottomed in mineralization. We look forward to continued aggressive drilling in order to see how much more this exceptional discovery can grow,” Sussman said.

The holes have increased by about three times the potential total volume of rock hosting the Main Breccia discovery, with dimensions now measuring 385 metres along strike by 350 metres width by 825 metres depth. Previous dimensions came to 385 metres x 190 metres x 500 metres.

The Breccia is made up of quartz porphyry clasts and a matrix of chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite and pyrite, overprinted by carbonate base metal veins, Collective said.

Fourteen diamond drill holes with accompanying assay results have been announced at Apollo, with a further 11 holes outstanding. As part of Collective’s 20,000-metre drill program for 2022, three rigs continue at Apollo and assay results are anticipated in the near future.

Tuesday’s drill results come almost one week after previous results from Collective almost doubled the width of the Main Breccia discovery at Guayabales.

Of the seven targets at Guayabales, the Apollo, Olympus, Donut and Trap sites have revealed important discoveries. Scout, Victory and ME have either returned subpar results or are in the early exploration stages.  

Drilling also continues at Collective’s San Antonio gold project, about 10 km from Guayabales.

The company’s shares jumped 9% to $2.67 on Wednesday, but fell to a 12-month low at $2.45 in late-session trading. Collective’s shares achieved a high of $4.07 in the past 12 months. It has a market cap of $127 million.