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(Sharecast News) - Metals Exploration announced the start of a geophysical survey on Wednesday, as it prepared to start drilling at its newly-granted Dupax exploration tenement in Northern Luzon, Philippines, targeting high-grade gold and copper mineralisation near its existing Runruno processing facility.
The AIM-traded company said that it had received licence EP-000168 for the 3,100-hectare Dupax area, located 20 kilometres southwest of its Runruno gold mine.
An induced polarisation (IP) ground survey was already underway, with a 2,500-metre drilling campaign set to commence shortly.
The Dupax project covers a 10 kilometre geological belt that includes the historical high-grade Keon open pit.
Rock chip sampling had previously returned grades of up to 15.47 grams per tonne of gold and 7% copper.
The IP survey was designed to identify sulphide-rich mineralisation and define deeper drill targets along the mineralised belt.
"With the grant of EP-000168, we now control 10 kilometres of contiguous tenure only 20 kilometres south of the Runruno Operation," said chief executive Darren Bowden.
"It is exciting to have commenced IP surveying and drilling programmes over the strong rock chip and trenching anomalies we delineated at the Dupax VMS Project."
Bowden said that, because the company already had a processing facility 20 kilometres away at Runruno, it had a "great opportunity" to quickly unlock value from Dupax and extend the ore processing operations at Runruno.
"This outcome would significantly enhance the value of both the Runruno process plant and the Dupax exploration project."
Metals Exploration noted that, if an economic resource was discovered, ore from Dupax could be processed at Runruno after existing reserves were exhausted.
The Runruno plant could be re-purposed to handle Dupax ore within six to nine months, producing a combination of mixed metal concentrate and gold dor.
Construction of a five kilometre access road was also underway to facilitate haulage if mining proceeded.
At 1304 BST, shares in Metals Exploration were up 3.21% at 13.78p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.