The playbook — tungsten · September 18, 2026
Allied Critical fills in the Santa Helena breccia at Borralha
Four infill holes confirm the block model at the Portuguese tungsten project. No new ground gained — the growth story is still pending at Venise.
Allied Critical Metals drilled four holes into the Santa Helena breccia at its Borralha project in northern Portugal and hit broad bands of tungsten. The headline numbers: 15.8 metres at 0.36% WO3 (that is 3,600 parts per million of tungsten oxide) and, in the same hole, 63.4 metres at 0.16% starting 58 metres down. A second hole returned 25.6 metres at 0.25% and 43.4 metres at 0.17% from 112 metres down. These are metre-percent results, not the gram-per-tonne gold numbers you may be used to, so treat any gram-meter math as illustrative only.
Here is the honest frame: this is infill drilling, not discovery. All four holes land inside the resource the company already outlined in its preliminary economic assessment (PEA) — an early, back-of-envelope study of whether a mine could pay. Infill drilling exists to prove the rock is where the model says it is, and the company reports these results are “generally consistent” with that model. That is exactly what conversion drilling is supposed to do. It de-risks the deposit toward a feasibility study; it does not make it bigger. The real standout remains an earlier hole, Bo_13/26, which cut 81.5 metres at 0.22% including a rich 4.0-metre streak at 2.96%. Disclosure here is strong: samples went to ALS labs in Spain and Ireland with reference standards, blanks and duplicates inserted.
A few things to keep in mind. The true widths are estimated from the interpreted shape of the mineralized corridors, not measured hole by hole — a weaker method the company flags itself. The qualified person, VP Exploration Vitor Arezes, is not independent of the company, as the release states. And the release claims these holes “support the continuity” of the zone but gives no collar table, no coordinates, no spacing — so it does not state how far the mineralization was extended. It wasn’t; no scale was added. Growth, if it comes, sits at the Venise breccia, where two deep holes (roughly 776 and 665 metres) are drilled but not yet assayed. Also pending: more Santa Helena assays, and the US$15M second equity tranche announced in April 2026, still described as “continuing to progress towards closing” five months on. The stock fell about 12% over three months while the base-metals peer index fell about 6%.