True North Copper (ASX: TNC) has reported the best intercepts to date from an extended Phase 2 drilling campaign along the Aquila trend at its Mt Oxide project, located 140 kilometres from Mt Isa in north-west Queensland.
Assays for the first 12 of a 26-hole campaign for 7,074 metres delivered one of the strongest copper intercepts this year—59m grading 1.77% copper, including 7m at almost 8% copper.
The campaign focused on testing Aquila’s geophysical responses at shallow depths and confirmed several zones of strong copper mineralisation, indicating high-grade shoot zones within a continuous copper-cobalt-silver system.
Assay Result Highlights
The best assay of 59m at 1.77% copper, 0.04% cobalt, and 5.2 grams per tonne silver from 134m included 33m at 2.83% copper, 0.02% cobalt, and 7.8g/t silver, and 7m at 7.9% copper, 0.02% cobalt, and 13.7g/t silver.
Another highlight hit was 23m at 1.09% copper, 0.03% cobalt, and 2.7g/t silver from 171m, which included 8m at 2.71% copper, 0.02% cobalt, and 5.7g/t silver.
The results, which extend the known mineralisation by 200m to the north for a total strike length of more than 700m, establish Aquila as a substantial mineral system comparable to significant deposits in the Mt Isa inlier.
True North has planned follow-up campaign at Aquila for mid-2026 to target the high-grade zone identified in Phase 2, as well as extensions below high-grade shoots indicated by the discovery drillholes.
‘Rare Grade and Scale’
Chief executive officer Andrew Mooney said the assays continued to prove Mt Oxide’s prospectivity.
“Discoveries of this grade and scale in the Mt Isa region are rare, and the sort of find an exploration geologist could spend their whole career looking for,” he said.
“Aquila appears to have the grade, scale, and continuity we have long believed was repeated along the trend that already hosts the existing high-grade Vero resource.”
The company also plans to conduct extensional induced polarisation surveys to the north and south of the Aquila, Apollo, and Acanthis trends, as well as at the Rhea target within the Mt Gordon Fault Zone.
