On June 19, 2024, Silver Lake advised that the proposed merger between Silver Lake and Red 5 Limited by way of scheme of arrangement has now been implemented. All Silver Lake shares have been transferred to Red 5.
Vault Minerals Limited has been decided as the new name of the merged Red 5 and Silver Lake.
Silver Lake (Deflector) Pty Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Silver Lake Resources Ltd) operate the Deflector Gold Copper Mine.
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Summary:
The Deflector deposit is a gold-copper mineral system located within the Gullewa Greenstone Belt of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia. The stratigraphic sequence at Gullewa comprises a lower group of ultramafic and mafic greenstones with minor local BIF units, overlain by intermediate and felsic volcanic rocks, with an upper association of clastic sediments, including shale, sandstone, conglomerate and turbidites. Three distinct lithological domains – northern, southern and eastern have been identified.
The Gullewa Goldfield and the Deflector deposit occur in the northern domain, which is dominated by high-magnesium basalts and contains a distinct package of tholeiitic basalt and BIF, which is the preferred host for much of the known mineralisation. A thin sequence of turbidites and black shales is present in drilling southeast of the Deflector trend, where the rocks young to the southeast towards the Gearless Well Trachyandesite.
The Deflector deposit lies beneath a broad drainage system, comprising sheetwash, and a braided channel deposit that transports alluvium from the northwest through the project area towards the Salt River. Beneath the cover sequence, the Deflector deposit is hosted by a monotonous sequence of pillowed, variolithic, high-magnesium basalts that have been intruded by dacitic porphyry, dolerite and dolerite – lamprophyre dykes typically oriented 45° towards 240°) and exlithic stock. Underlying the northwestern side of Deflector is a large area of metabasalt that has a thickness of at least 300 m, strikes 045° and dips steeply to the southeast. The metabasalt is in contact with a sedimentary unit dominated by siltstone on the southeastern side of the deposit.
The high-magnesium metabasalt is generally black, fine grained, extremely hard and lacks any obvious cleavage. A needle-like texture that is similar to spinifex textures in komatiites is observed in approximately half of the basalt units and the others have poorly developed pillows.
The heterogeneous nature of the sedimentary sequence makes rock identification difficult. Siltstone is interpreted to be the major rock type in the sedimentary zone, which is mostly black and graphitic; however, it can be locally pale brown or grey. There is an absence of cleavage or fissile bedding. The sedimentary sequence is cut by quartz feldspar porphyries and dark grey to black, intermediate biotite lamprophyres.
A major sinistral reverse fault in the north end of the mine, called the Shredder Fault, offsets the ore lodes by approximately 35 m and is itself intruded by dacitic porphyry.
The mineralisation type is classified as a hybrid Archaean orogenic gold-copper type within the Gullewa greenstone sequence. The deposit comprises a series of en echelon veins hosted within a flexure in the greenstone stratigraphy. Locally, the mineralisation is hosted in five main vein sets, the Western, Central, Da Vinci, Contact and Deflector South West lodes.
Ongoing work at the Deflector South West lode indicates that it is likely the continuous strike extension of Western domain. The main lodes are narrow, subparallel, fault-hosted, quartz-sulfide veins within a thick sequence of high-magnesium basalt intruded by a series of dacitic, dolerite and lamprophyric dykes. The mafic sequence is bound in the east by a volcaniclastic unit, and in the west by an ultramafic unit. The metamorphic grade is defined as lower greenschist facies. Mineralisation occurs as quartz, carbonate, chalcopyrite and pyrite veins and associated breccias with visible gold observed in both oxide and fresh mineralisation. Mineralisation is strongly associated with ‘spinifex’ basalt, but also occurs along the footwall ultramafic contact to the basaltic package, and also along the sedimentary hanging wall contact.
Chalcopyrite is the only significant copper-bearing mineral in the primary unweathered mineralised areas of the lodes, with pyrite also occurring. The oxidised zone contains the copper minerals malachite and chrysocolla, with native copper being common in the lower parts of the zone and closely correlated with cuprite.
The Deflector resource extents are approximately 1,600 m along strike, 430 m across strike and 630 m below surface. These extents host approximately 100 known mineralised zones (mineralised domains). The mineralised zones are typically 0.3–5 m wide.