QMines has identified six additional electromagnetic targets for follow-up exploration at Mount Chalmers after applying new modelling to survey data.

The inversion modelling was funded by the Queensland Government’s Collaborative Exploration Initiative (CEI).

QMines executive chairman Andrew Sparke said the team was excited to identify new massive sulphide targets and enhance existing targets.

“The company anticipates drilling the best of these new and existing targets in 2024,” he said.

Data from QMines’ recent helicopter VTEM survey was initially studied by consultants Mitre Geophysics in the search for new Volcanic Hosted Massive Sulphide (VHMS) deposits similar to the Mount Chalmers resource.

The company said this work revealed that the Mount Chalmers mineralisation was considered weakly conductive and associated with a type of geological noise which could hide weak ‘normal’ electromagnetic (EM) responses.

These weaker EM responses may be the result of deeper targets, smaller targets or targets with more sphalerite.

CEI funding allowed QMines to use specialists EMergo SRL to apply modern processing algorithms to the VTEM data to better identify deep conductors.

Six new anomalies were identified, bringing the total number of target anomalies from the 2023 VTEM survey to 40.

QMines said the processing had also improved the strength of several existing anomalies that were previously partly obscured by polarisation effects.

Mount Chalmers is the company’s flagship project, located 17km north-east of Rockhampton.

It is progressing a pre-feasibility study for the combined Mount Chalmers, Woods Shaft and Develin Creek deposits.