QMines Limited announced planned drilling at the Mt Warminster Volcanic Hosted Massive Sulphide (VHMS) Exploration Target, located 1.6km north-west of the Company's Mt Chalmers Copper and Gold Project. The Mt Chalmers project is located 17km north-east of Rockhampton, Queensland. Recent acquisition and modelling of historical VTEM data collected from the Mt Chalmers area has revealed a notable Electro Magnetic (EM) response at Mt Warminster, which is known to host coincident copper and zinc geochemical anomalies where historical drilling has intersected shallow base metal mineralisation.

Historical drilling by Geopeko in 1977 and 1981 (56 holes) included 25 drillholes with significant intercepts. These include 15 drillholes with results reporting over 1% base metals, principally Zn with lesser Pb, Cu and Ag. Drill intercepts include 12m @ 2.1% Zn in hole MWPDH56 and 18m @ 0.7% Cu, 0.2% Pb, 0.6% Zn and 14g/t Ag in hole MWPDH58.

Mineralisation has been reported as forming a gently dipping tabular body of largely disseminated base metal sulphides incorporating semi-massive sulphide pods. This geometry, and the dominant Zn-Pb signature is interpreted to be the distal apron of a VHMS system. Adjacent VTEM anomalies to the immediate west may vector towards increased massive sulphides in that direction.

As a result, QMines is preparing to drill both infill holes to classify a resource, and step-out holes in the search for massive sulphides. Drilling activities are expected to resume at the south of the Mt Chalmers resource in January and then at Mt Warminster following the acquisition of the airborne VTEM Max survey. Historical underground workings have revealed several lenticular semi-massive sulphide bodies within a broad zone of disseminated base metal sulphides with associated sericite and kaolin alteration, hosted by pyrite-altered siltstone.

A broad alteration zone exists which is strongest adjacent to an andesite sill, with the sequence dipping towards the east (Hunns, 2001). The mineralised horizon appears to be repeated below the andesite with Zn values up to 0.48% being intersected in disseminated mineralisation near the bottom of hole MWPDH02. Based on historical drilling, the Mt Warminster Exploration Target was modelled as part of an Independent Geologist's Report by H&SC in October 2021 which determined that the target measures 500m in strike, 120 - 350m in width and has a thickness ranging from 6 - 40m.

Using a 1% ZnEq cut-off, H&SC estimated an Exploration Target of 1.5 - 1.8Mt @ 0.5%-0.7% Zn, 0.1%-0.2% Cu, 0.25%-0.35% Pb and 8g/t-12g/t Ag. With historical drillholes spaced at a 200m x 100m grid (with some infill at 100m x 50m) there is scope for the QMines resource definition infill drilling to move to a 50m x 25m grid with additional step-out exploration holes to the west.