Exploration drilling at the Mount Polley copper-gold mine in central B.C. Imperial Metals photo
Imperial Metals (TSX: III) soared to its highest in nearly four years on Thursday on the back of encouraging results from this year’s diamond drilling at the Mount Polley mine in south-central British Columbia.
The 2025 exploration centres around the C2 zone, located immediately south of the Cariboo pit where mining is being carried out. The ongoing work focuses on filling the gaps in historic drilling to support the design of an expanded pit, as well as to target a higher-grade zone at depth.
The initial drilling returned a notable interval of 152.5 metres grading 0.46% copper and 0.97 g/t gold starting from a depth of 282.5 metres, including 85 metres grading 0.67% copper and 1.56 g/t gold starting at 285 metres.
Two other holes also intersected significant mineralization — up to 1.1 g/t gold and 0.79% copper — over considerable intervals.
The results sent Imperial Metals’ shares 12.6% higher at market close, trading at C$4.30 apiece and a market capitalization of C$698.8 million. Earlier, the stock had hit a new 52-week high of C$4.32, which was its highest since July 2021.
The company has been producing copper and gold from Mount Polley since restarting the mine nearly three years ago. Prior to that, the operation near Williams Lake had been placed on care and maintenance following a serious dam failure in 2014, considered to be the worst environmental mining disaster in British Columbia’s history.
In addition to Mount Polley, Imperial also owns 30% of the Red Chris copper-gold mine located 80 km south of Dease Lake, northwest BC. The mine’s 70% ownership belongs to Newmont.
Total production of the mines attributed to the company last year was 61.3 million lb. of copper and 57,000 oz. of gold.
