Battery minerals, Exploration/Development, Gold, News

Zopkhito drills chase antimony-gold prize

gold antimony ore

Krakatoa Resources has commenced its second underground drilling season at the Zopkhito antimony-gold project in Georgia, marking a significant step in the company’s push to establish a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate and advance early-stage mine development studies.

The 2026 program is focused on resource definition drilling, metallurgical optimisation and preliminary mining studies. Underground core drilling is targeting known antimony (Sb) and gold (Au) mineralised veins within historical workings, while underground panel sampling and bulk sampling are expected to begin in the coming weeks.

“It is exciting for the company to have commenced the 2026 field season at Zopkhito, with access and site preparation completed,” Krakatoa Resources chief executive officer Mark Major said.

“This work program is designed to support the delivery of a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate and advance early mine development studies.”

Located in Georgia’s Racha region, the 1779-hectare project is covered by a mining licence valid until March 2042. Krakatoa currently holds an exclusive option to acquire up to an 80 per cent interest in the project.

Zopkhito hosts a foreign resource estimate of 225,000 tonnes at 11.6 per cent antimony for approximately 26,000 tonnes of contained antimony, alongside 7.1 million tonnes grading 3.7g/t gold for 815,119 ounces of contained gold.

Major said that the 2025 drilling campaign had confirmed the high-grade nature of the mineralisation and highlighted further growth potential.

“With antimony emerging as a strategically critical mineral, Zopkhito has the potential to become a rare and significant European source of antimony, and we are looking forward to a very busy year ahead for Krakatoa,” he said.

The project is supported by extensive historical exploration, including approximately 27km of underground exploration adits, more than 15,000 historical channel and geochemical samples, and previous LiDAR and induced polarisation geophysical surveys.

The current exploration program has been designed to convert the existing foreign resource estimate into a JORC 2012-compliant mineral resource estimate, while also advancing metallurgical studies and evaluating future mining opportunities at the project.

Recent drilling and sampling activities are expected to provide further insight into the continuity and scale of the high-grade antimony and gold mineralisation identified across the deposit.

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