The Mount Storm prospect is emerging as a compelling target for New Frontier Minerals after a sampling campaign returned copper grades up to 6.88 per cent.

The site is just 8km from the company’s flagship Big One deposit and about 75km north of Austral Resources Australia’s Mount Kelly processing facility in North-West Queensland.

Historical small-scale mining, most recently by Coffee Gold in the early 1990s, extracted about 1100t of ore at Mount Storm total – 700t at a head grade of 7 per cent copper and a later batch of 400t at 4.5 per cent.

New Frontier said fieldwork in May focussed on geological mapping and sampling of country rock, mineralised outcrop, ex-mine dumps and in-pit grab samples.

Detailed laboratory analyses of eight rock chip and grab samples confirmed high-grade copper mineralisation at surface.

Copper values for pit and dump samples ranged from 0.49 per cent to 6.88 per cent copper, with the samples returning high copper values also associated with minor anomalous silver, cobalt, nickel and zinc.

Sequential leach analysis confirmed high recoveries for the sulphuric acid-soluble copper component, the company said.

“The Mount Storm assays are an excellent outcome from our May field program in Queensland,” New Frontier Minerals (ASX: NFM) chairman Gerrard Hall said.

“Copper grades of up to 6.88 per cent at surface, together with acid-soluble copper recoveries, confirm the historical results that first drew our attention to a prospect that has already produced ore-grade material at around 6 per cent copper.

“Sitting only 8 km from our Big One deposit, Mount Storm is emerging as a compelling target, and our team will return to site this month to complete the detailed mapping that will assist in the development of any future drill program.”