Drill Results Expands Deep Kerr Mine Plan

TORONTO - Seabridge Gold reported results from the first two core holes drilled this year into the Deep Kerr deposit are, as planned, likely to allow for an increase in the potential mining rate from the proposed block cave shapes designed to exploit the deposit cost-effectively from underground. The new holes are expected to expand the known resource to the south, confirming grades consistent with the deposit's inferred resource, in the shape and orientation required to optimize the proposed mine plan at a higher throughput.  

The Deep Kerr deposit, located on Seabridge's 100%-owned KSM Project in northwestern British Columbia, contains an inferred resource of 11.3 million ounces of gold and 11.8 billion pounds of copper. In the three years since its discovery, Deep Kerr has taken its place among the largest undeveloped gold-copper deposits.

The first two holes drilled this year have confirmed continuity of mineralization in Deep Kerr over considerable distances south of the existing resource. K-16-51, located about 125 meters south of the current resource limits, intersected multiple zones including 119 meters averaging 0.44 g/T gold and 0.45% copper and an additional 187 meters averaging 0.33 g/T gold and 0.46% copper. K-16-52 intercepted 231 meters grading 0.31 g/T gold and 0.47% copper about 500 meters laterally to the south of K-16-51. K-16-51 and K-16-52 both intersected the mineralized zone about 150-250 meters below the existing resource. 

Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk commented that “This year's drill program has been carefully designed to expand and optimize the prospective mine plan at Deep Kerr and thereby improve the KSM project's potential economics. The mineralized intervals in these first two holes are effectively orientated for efficient extraction.The drill results should also contribute another meaningful increase to the Deep Kerr inferred resource. Overall, Deep Kerr is once again demonstrating that it has very few equals for size and grade."

K-16-51 and K-16-52 have been re-entered for so-called daughter holes which use the upper part of the original hole before being wedged into new intercepts of the target zone. The daughter holes are targeted to fill in the gaps along strike from the original drill holes.

Over the past three years, Seabridge's exploration programs have successfully targeted higher grade zones beneath KSM's near-surface porphyry deposits, resulting in the discovery of Deep Kerr and the Iron Cap Lower Zone, two copper-rich deposits that have added more than one billion tonnes of inferred resources to the project at a higher average grade.