Greenland-focused Bluejay Mining is preparing for a “highly active” year ahead, as it plans for a maiden drilling campaign at its newly enlarged Kangerluarsuk zinc/lead/silver project, while work continues at the advanced Dundas ilmenite project and the Disko-Nussauq project.

Bluejay CEO Roderick McIllree on Monday announced that Bluejay had been awarded a new mineral exploration licence surrounding the existing Kangerluarsuk project, which at 586 km² has expanded the project licence area to 692 km².

“Our decision to increase our land holding by over five-fold is testament to our confidence in the licence's prospectivity.  With this in mind we are excited to commence our 2020 field season,” he said.

The field season will include a relatively low-cost maiden drilling campaign, targeting known zinc, silver, lead, silver and copper occurrences that have correlations with the neighbouring former Black Angel zinc/lead/silver mine.

Black Angel mine produced 11-million tonnes at 12.6% zinc, 4.1% lead and 29 g/t silver during operation by Cominco, from 1973 to 1986, and later Boliden until 1990. The mine is situated 10 km south of Bluejay's new licence area.

The company stated that its existing 106 km² exploration licence at Kangerluarsuk was acknowledged by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland as the strongest cluster of stream sediment zinc anomalies in Greenland.

Prospecting at Kangerluarsuk in the early 1990s, under a joint venture between Rio Tinto Zinc and Platinova, revealed several locations with outcropping high-grade mineralisation, with chip sampling profiles up to 1 m at 41.1% zinc, 0.4 m at 45.4% zinc and grab samples up to 9.3% lead, 1.2% copper and 596 g/t silver.

Bluejay acquired the Kangerluarsuk project in January 2017, when it purchased Avannaa Exploration and its exploration assets in an all share transaction with Cairn Energy.