Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Asian Battery Metals (ASX:AZ9) Managing Director, Gan-Ochir Zunduisuren
Lel Smits: Asian Battery Metals is a mineral explorer targeting the discovery of critical battery mineral deposits in Mongolia, including at its wholly-owned Yambat project, where drilling has already unveiled a significant copper and nickel discovery at the Oval Prospect. Joining me today from Asian Battery Metals is its Managing Director, Gan-Ochir Zunduisuren. Gan-Ochir, welcome to The Stock Network.
Gan-Ochir: Thank you. Good to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, last year you reported a series of shallow and significant grade copper and nickel intercepts at Oval. Can you tell us about some of these drill hits and the potential exploration upside at the prospect?
Gan-Ochir: Of course. This year we have really built on last year’s success and continued our drilling in three different directions to really achieve our expression strategy that we put this year. One is increasing the high-grade or increasing the understanding of the high-grade zones within the Oval-Gabbroic Intrusion.
And also, second one is extending of the Oval-Gabbroic Intrusion to the depth and also to the side. On top of that, really adding additional drilling areas and targets in detailed expression area and also in regional context. With that, we have achieved this year, so far we are achieving pretty good results.
That included multiple intercepts of master sulfides in drilling of extension of the Noven master sulfide intercepts from 2024 drilling. And also, we have released that we have confirmed with our drill hole OVD32, we have intercepted deeper high-tenure sulfides, which is indicating potentially the mineralization going to the deeper part into the ground.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. Now, looking at follow-up drilling at Oval, your drilling campaign to follow up on last year’s prospective results is underway, as you mentioned. And the assay results, some have just been released. What does the drilling conducted so far tell you about the mineralized footprint at Oval?
Gan-Ochir: Well, with the assay results, it confirms high-grade mineralization in multiple holes throughout the Oval Copper Nickel Discovery.
The highlights would be OVD33 has confirmed strong mineralization down deep from standout hole OVD21 from 2024. The hole OVD33 has intercepted 37.7 meters of 1.36% copper and 0.86% nickel, and plus PG and gold from 92 meters. More importantly, it also intercepted 6.7 meters of similar grades starting from roughly 160 meters.
It’s quite a significant hole for us. In addition, OVD32, where I mentioned earlier that it’s potentially a dike that’s actually bringing out all the mineralization close to the surface, there we intercepted 5.6 meters of mineralization, including half meters of semi-massive sulfide, which returned more than 1% copper, close to 2% nickel, and plus PG for us. It is quite significant results.
On top of that, we are expecting additional pending assay results from hole 36 and 40 that we released last week, both of them extension of the known massive sulfide mineralization, and those assays are going to be back potentially within the next two or three weeks to us.
Lel Smits: Excellent. Now, you also commenced a exploration program at Yambat, which includes several drill testing, large-scale regional target areas. Can you tell us about the potential of these high-priority targets? Yeah, the regional work really covered by the third part I said earlier of our strategy, which is expanding the understanding of the overall mineral system and adding additional expression areas and drilling areas for future exploration. The overall area itself is quite covered. The significance of the work that we’re doing in the regionally is we’re going to be testing on some of the geophysical targets that we can’t see, and then try to understand exactly what type of rocks are actually giving similar signatures to oval gabbroic intrusion.
First of all, we need to find intrusion. It has to be gabbroic or mafic or ultramafic intrusion for us, and it has to show potentially mineralization for us. I think we’re going to be providing update on these targets in the near future to the market.
Lel Smits: Great to see all those updates coming through. Thank you so much for the update today.
Gan-Ochir: Thank you, Lel.