Drilling at the One Tree Hill prospect hit a 15m mineralised zone, which included 3.25m of continuous massive sulphides from 343.4m down-hole that contained around 5-10% chalcopyrite amongst pyrrhotite.

The balance of the intersection included disseminated, matrix and stringer copper-iron sulphides.

The hole was a follow-up to a 2015 hole that returned 0.3m at 10.1% copper from 193.8m and 0.4m at 4.48% copper from 250.9m.

Cassini managing director Richard Bevan said the intersection signalled the potential for a major mineralised system at One Tree Hill.

“This discovery really opens up the southern part of the project area,” he said.

“Time will tell if this is a significant discovery in its own right, but this has already given us a compelling reason to continue with our exploration strategy of finding new deposits that will complement the development at Nebo-Babel.”

Assays won’t be received until mid-January.

Mineralisation appears to be open in most directions and preliminary data suggests the mineralisation is similar to the Succoth copper deposit within the West Musgrave project.

Succoth has a resource of 156 million tonnes at 0.6% copper.

One Tree Hill is 13km southwest of the Babel deposit, with no previous exploration having been conducted between the two.

The flagship Nebo-Babel deposits have a resource of 203.1Mt at 0.41% nickel and 0.42% copper (1.38% copper equivalent or 0.59% nickel equivalent), using a 0.3% nickel cut-off.

OZ is completing a scoping study at West Musgrave as part of a farm-in deal worth up to $36 million.

Shares in Cassini jumped by 6% to 5.1c, after hitting as high as 5.8c, while OZ were down by 0.4% to $8.225.