Perth-based BBX Minerals (ASX: BBX) says its latest drill core assays from the Três Estados project in the Brazilian state of Amazonas shows scattered platinum mineralisation close to surface, with mineralisation remaining open at depth.

The hole — from the 2021-2021 drilling program at the Tabocal prospect — was assayed for gold, platinum, palladium, iridium and rhodium, and revealed four separate zones were intersected.

Hole 002 returned 2m at 6.6 grams per tonne platinum and 0.03g/t rhodium from 2m; 4m at 2.65g/t platinum, 0.08g/t rhodium and 0.08g/t gold from 6m; 24.16m at 2.2g/t platinum, 0.08g/t iridium and 0.01g/t rhodium from 25.48m; and 20.43m at 1.24g/t platinum, 0.09g/t iridium and 0.02g/t rhodium from 54m to end of hole.

BBX chief executive officer Andre Douchane said the company is pleased that this latest assay returned similar results to Hole 001.

He said three other holes will now be assayed and will be included in a new resource estimate.

Drilling in a region ‘vastly’ underexplored

BBX’s key assets are the Três Estados and Ema gold projects in the Apuí region of Brazil.

Três Estados is located 60km south of Apuí, a town of 22,000 people.

Apuí achieved brief fame in 2006 when a Brazilian maths teacher reported seeing miners scooping up handfuls of gold there, which triggered a rush by thousands of people to the Amazon town.

BBX has previously stated that the Apuí region has good infrastructure — it has direct access to the Trans-Amazonian Highway and a port on the Amazon River along with an airport — but remains “vastly underexplored”

Project has seen previous artisanal mining

The Três Estados project, which began as essentially a gold operation, covers 8,172 hectares, with the principal magnetic feature and geochemical anomaly being about 1km wide and about 4km in length.

The area has been the subject of shallow artisanal mining.

BBX has been working with the Sao Paula state research institute to develop an in-house extraction technology, as the complex type of mineralisation requires non-traditional extraction methods.