SHUKA MINERALS PLC - Kabwe Drilling (KBDD06-11) - Drilling results from ALS Laboratories

What this filing means

Shuka Minerals has the ALS laboratory assays back for the balance of its Kabwe drill programme, and the numbers are strong: KBDD09 returned 12.09% zinc over 55.6m from 63.5m, with individual core samples peaking at 46.7%, 41.2% and 49.7% zinc in the three holes testing the previously undrilled Sperm Whale target. The company says those grades far exceeded its own pre-drill expectations, and the mineralisation sits at surface with grades rising with depth. What matters is that a new orebody is now confirmed by laboratory work, not just by the field XRF readings announced earlier.

Shuka has been drilling at its Kabwe zinc mine and has now got the proper laboratory results back. Three holes into a target nobody had ever drilled before came back with very high zinc grades — far better than the company itself was expecting. That matters because a mine's value is the metal it can actually dig up, and this suggests there is more of it than the old estimates assumed. It is still early-stage: these are drill results, not a new resource estimate, and the company has not yet said how much metal this adds or what it would cost to mine.