Nevada Zinc Options Zinc-Copper Project
TORONTO - Nevada Zinc Corporation has entered into an option agreement that allows the Company the right to earn up to an 80% interest in the MacBride zinc property. The MacBride Property, located in central Manitoba, contains the high grade MacBride zinc deposit located along a six kilometer structural magnetic high corridor. Along this well defined magnetic high corridor, several additional untested electromagnetic (EM) airborne anomalies similar to the EM signature of the MacBride zinc deposit have been identified. Given the propensity for these volcanogenic zinc and copper rich massive sulphide deposits to be found in proximity to each other and the history of discoveries in the belt, the Company views the MacBride zinc deposit as having very high potential for additional discoveries.
Bruce Durham, President and CEO said “Reasonably accessible, high grade, near-surface zinc deposits with significant room for growth like the MacBride zinc deposit are very rare, particularly in a stable, safe and mining friendly jurisdiction like Manitoba. The MacBride zinc deposit remains open to expansion in all directions and with additional drilling has the potential to be much larger in size. Modern airborne geophysical data and interpretation shows a number of undrilled, similar, EM targets which indicate a high likelihood of discovering additional zinc-copper mineralization elsewhere on the MacBride Property. Nevada Zinc now has two significant zinc exploration projects underway, both in excellent jurisdictions. Diamond drilling continues at our Lone Mountain project in Nevada. We expect to begin to receive drill core assay results near the end of this month from Lone Mountain and we will begin compilation work at MacBride immediately.”
Near surface drill holes include results of 9.98% zinc and 0.56% copper over a core length of 10.67 meters (depth approximately 25 meters). True width of the zone is unknown. Deeper drill holes (near a vertical depth of225 meters) include an interval of 10.3% zinc over a core length of 11.19 meters. True width of the zone is unknown. Mineralization appears to be open to significant expansion along strike and the mineralization also remains open beyond the depth of the deepest drill holes.
Newly identified outside targets remain untested and exhibit conductivity characteristics virtually identical to MacBride zinc deposit’s electromagnetic response.
Scattered copper and gold mineralization located outside the MacBride zinc deposit area near other targets was reported in some historic work on and in the area of the MacBride Property.
The deposit, discovered in the 1970’s, has seen only limited drilling and has not been subjected to an extensive, systematic, exploration program. The MacBride zinc deposit is within the same Paleoproterozoic-aged metavolcanic rocks and interbedded meta-sediments as those that host the historic Ruttan copper-zinc mine. The MacBride zinc deposit coincides with a 1.8 kilometer long, strongly conductive, EM anomaly feature hosted within a well defined extensive magnetic high corridor that is more than six kilometers long. The deposit has been drilled along a strike length of approximately 275 meters and the remaining 1,550 meters of the EM anomaly remains untested. The deposit remains open along strike and at depth. There are numerous similar conductive EM anomalies that have been identified in reprocessing of a modern airborne geophysical survey along the magnetic corridor that remain undrilled.
The deposit mineralization consists of coarse pyrite in a matrix of pyrrhotite, sphalerite and containing blebs of chalcopyrite. The extensive recrystallization of the massive sulphides and incorporation of wall rock fragments in the deposit mineralization suggests significant sulphide remobilization. The gangue mineral assemblage is lightly disseminated with sulphides and is primarily comprised of amphibole, biotite, chlorite, sericite and garnet typical of wall rock alteration products in volcanic massive sulphide deposit terrains.