ECR Minerals Regulatory News (ECR)

ECR MINERALS plc

("ECR Minerals", "ECR" or the "Company")

Hurricane Project - Final Rock Chip Results & Regional Prospectivity Summary

ECR Minerals plc (LON: ECR), the exploration and development company focused on gold in Australia, is pleased to announce the final rock chip results and latest exploration developments at the Hurricane Project. The project area is located approximately 200km west of Cairns in North Queensland, Australia.

As announced on 2 October 2023, the Company has agreed a 4 week extension to its option agreement to potentially acquire the entire issued share capital of Placer Gold Pty Limited, the beneficial holder of three granted mining tenements (EPM 27518, EPM 25855 and EPM 19437) known as the Hurricane Project. This project is located in the Hurricane area of North Queensland, and the exact details of the option are set out in the announcement dated 23 October 2022. The extension was to allow the ECR team further time to analyse and review the project and the directors have set expectations that they will, as part of that process, be proposing revised terms and conditions to the option.

Accordingly, the Board is continuing to evaluate the Hurricane Project and in particular, the mineralised vein systems currently established at Hurricane are known as the Holmes, Tornado, Cyclone, Pedersons, Bouncer, Typhoon and the Hurricane North and South.

Separately, on 27 September 2023, ECR Minerals announced it had also applied for additional exploration ground (named Kondaparinga) immediately on the eastern boundary of the Hurricane Project. The application will be assessed by government officials before a licence will be granted. There can be no guarantee that this licence will be granted, but the Director have every expectation it will be.

HIGHLIGHTS

·      Final results from the Hurricane Project received for 224 rock chip samples.

·      Best results include grab samples up to 45.7 g/t Au (Hurricane North) and 43.2 % Antimony (Holmes South) or 83.38 g/t gold equivalent grade.

·      A full review of the size and extent of mapped visible outcrops is presented below. Quartz stockwork zones up to 20m wide have been confirmed at the Holmes prospect.

ECR Technical Director Adam Jones commented: "The ECR field team are pleased with rock chip sampling results and data from the completed campaign at the Hurricane Project. We have established beyond doubt that the Holmes vein is the dominant vein system within the wider Hurricane area, with the best gold and antimony grades sampled at the shear zone there. Similar potential exists at Hurricane North and Typhoon prospects, where we have identified a potentially drill ready prospect to the south of Typhoon and logged some impressive grades at Hurricane North. Although the Cyclone, Tornado and Hurricane South prospects were less impressive grade wise, taken as a whole, we believe there is considerable potential in this area. Added to this, these results give us further confidence that the geology at the Kondaparinga prospect, where we have recently made a licence application, could well be contiguous with some of the Hurricane Project anomalies recorded here, a factor that could warrant further research."

ECR Managing Director Nick Tulloch commented: "As I have said previously, the Hurricane Project has been a key part of ECR's strategic planning over the past year. The overall results package is extremely encouraging, and our thanks go to Adam Jones and the field team for an exceptionally comprehensive piece of field work. It is clear that some of the grades and 'drill ready' zones indicate that ECR now has a potentially commercial proposition at Hurricane, but these conclusions have to be balanced against any cost of any option purchase agreed at the end of the extended time period, coupled with the capex required to progress the project to the next level. Along with Mike Whitlow, Adam Jones and the field team, we will now spend time assessing these results and how we can maximise the regional potential taking the wider Hodgkinson Province and our potential new Kondaparinga exploration license into account. I look forward to reporting back to you with our proposed course of action."

An Overview of the location of the rock chip sample and vein systems can be found in the link below:

Figure One: https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig1_Overview_231004.png

SUMMARY

Below the Board are pleased to provide a summary of all results from the extensive rock chip sampling and mapping programme undertaken during August 2023. The work also formed part of the due diligence as part of the terms of the agreed option agreement which detailed the potential purchase of the Hurricane Project from current vendors Placer Gold Pty Ltd, as detailed above.

The field team used a Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) to map out the boundaries of all visible outcrops and to determine the approximate potential strike and width of each quartz lode. In some instances, the exposed outcrops were rock chip sampled across the width of the lode and composite widths and grades were calculated from there. The majority of samples collected are considered 'grab samples' where the outcrop has been chipped within geological boundaries including shear zones, hanging walls and footwall quartz stockworks, and these samples have then been used to provide the Board with an indication of the potential Gold and Antimony grades within each prospect. The Gold equivalent value for Antimony has been calculated by reference to the formula (Sb% x 1.9), this is an internally generated formula based on widely accepted principles. It should be noted that grab sampling has been used to infer the possible grades and does not represent an in situ resource. We have cross referenced the following prospects to five separate linked figures.

HOLMES AND HOLMES SOUTH

Figure Two: Overview of sampling and mapping at the Holmes and Holmes South prospects:

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig2_Holmes_231004.png

The Holmes vein is the dominant vein system at the Hurricane Project. Not only is gold present within the vein, Antimony (present as Stibnite) is also visible and has been seen numerous times in outcrop. We have sub-divided the prospect into four main outcrops (A, B, C, D).

The best Gold and Antimony grades lie adjacent to the Holmes Shear Zone. Where exposed, the shear is up to 1m wide. Approximately 20m in strike is exposed in Outcrop C and 99m in strike exposed in Outcrop D. The shear has a Hanging-wall zone up to 20m wide that contains quartz stockworks. Our grab sampling recorded a potential average grade of 3.65 g/t Au Eq across the 20m wide zone and along the 20m exposed strike in Outcrop C. Two composite samples have been calculated from rock chipping across the NW and SE ends of Outcrop D at 4.55m @ 4.87 g/t Au and 4.55m @ 2.81 g/t Au.

Outcrop A and B are large exposure of sandstone on top of the hill containing quartz stockworks. Outcrops are up to 15m wide and 47m long. Average grab samples over the exposure returned 1.16 g/t Au.

CYCLONE AND TORNADO

Figures Three (a,b): Overview of sampling taken from the Cyclone and Tornado prospects

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig3_Tornado-Cyclone_231004.png

The Cyclone vein resides between the Holmes and Tornado lodes. The exposed vein is narrow, 94m long and up to 3.6m wide with best length and width found at a central 'bulge'. Our grab sampling throughout returned an average 1.75 g/t Au, although the majority of Cyclone samples were not considered to be of a commercial grade.

The Tornado vein was the first lode sampled due to easy site access via an existing 4WD track. The current outcrop is split by the East, Mid and West exposures (see Figure 3b above), with the best values located in the East Outcrop. Two composite chip samples taken across the width of this outcrop recorded grades of 4.2m @ 2.39 g/t Au and 2.2m @ 1.91 g/t Au, and a footwall quartz exposure was recorded by the field team to the south. The LIDAR data indicates a possible extension to the Tornado vein lying to the west of the mapped area. We have not verified this at the current time.

HURRICANE NORTH AND TYPHOON

Figure Four: Overview of sampling taken from Hurricane North and Typhoon prospects

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig4_HN-Typhoon_231004.png

The Hurricane North and Typhoon lodes are located at the bottom of a mountain range on the eastern side of the tenement. These lodes show evidence of past mining activity although we have concluded that probable challenges in accessing the region 100 years ago resulted in most of the historical workings being limited, shallow and under-developed. The field team prioritised sampling from in-situ exposed veins within the workings, and where this was not possible, grab samples were taken from ore dumps to help provide balanced estimates for the grades that were being mined. The Hurricane North and Typhoon lodes contain only Gold.

Best results were obtained from the southern part of the Typhoon lode. The in-situ vein is up to 42m long and 0.4m wide (at best), and is exposed within shallow trenches. Where sampled we obtained grades up to 29.0 g/t Au and recorded chip sample grab grade averages of 8.39 g/t Au over the exposed length of vein. Whilst the strike extent is short and the vein narrow, the Board believes the sampling to date already indicates this would be an ideal drill target. There are old access tracks to this area which the Board are satisfied could be used to transport drilling equipment to the site. We have also identified a potential 25m long zone in the Typhoon North area with grab samples up to 8.21 g/t Au.

The Hurricane North workings have been extensively mined on the eastern portion with the vein hosted within a wide black shale. Although limited sampling material was available, the samples collected yielded a best result of 14.75 g/t Au. In addition, the field team were able to sample exposed veins and ore dumps at the Central and North Western workings. Results up to 45.70 g/t Au from ore piles and 0.4m @ 5.84 g/t Au were recorded from exposed veins.

HURRICANE SOUTH

Figure Five: Overview of sampling taken from the Hurricane South prospect.

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig5_HS_231004.png

Extensive historical workings were mapped and recorded at the southern part of the Hurricane South prospect. Remnant quartz veins in exposures returned a result of 0.5m @ 4.05 g/t Au, and as the lode narrows to the north, the field team recorded a grab sample of 41.5 g/t Au. Small outlying workings to the west of the prospect returned grab samples of 16.10 g/t Au and 6.65 g/t Au from the mine dump. The vein could not be traced along strike.

NEXT STEPS AND REGIONAL PROSPECTIVITY

In light of the collective results, the Board is now considering the levels of capex required to progress the Hurricane Project to the next level. Such costs would include access track construction and drilling, which will be weighed against the economic potential of the project.

The Board has already considered the prospectivity of the adjacent Hodgkinson Gold region that lies immediately to the east of the Hurricane Project by recently applying for the Kondaparinga licence over the most prospective available exploration ground. The Geology team has identified numerous anomalous gold results from the publicly available historical stream sampling data within the applied licence.

Further updates on these matters will be provided in due course.

 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

 

                                                               

ABOUT ECR MINERALS PLC

 

ECR Minerals is a mineral exploration and development company. ECR's wholly owned Australian subsidiary Mercator Gold Australia Pty Ltd ("MGA") has 100% ownership of the Bailieston and Creswick gold projects in central Victoria, Australia, has six licence applications outstanding which includes one licence application lodged in eastern Victoria (Tambo gold project).

 

ECR also owns 100% of an Australian subsidiary LUX Exploration Pty Ltd ("LUX") which has three approved exploration permits covering 946 km2 over a relatively unexplored area in Lolworth Range, Queensland, Australia. The Company also has an option to acquire 100% of Placer Gold, which wholly owns the Hurricane Project, a later stage gold and antimony project located west of Cairns in the Hodgkinson Province, NE Queensland.

 

Following the sale of the Avoca, Moormbool and Timor gold projects in Victoria, Australia to Fosterville South Exploration Ltd (TSX-V: FSX) and the subsequent spin-out of the Avoca and Timor projects to Leviathan Gold Ltd (TSX-V: LVX), Mercator Gold Australia Pty Limited has the right to receive up to A$2 million in payments subject to future resource estimation or production from projects sold to Fosterville South Exploration Limited.

 

ECR holds a 90% interest in the Danglay gold project; an advanced exploration project located in a prolific gold and copper mining district in the north of the Philippines, which has a 43-101 compliant resource. ECR also holds a royalty on the SLM gold project in La Rioja Province, Argentina and can potentially receive up to US$2.7 million in aggregate across all licences.

 

 

APPENDIX ONE

Table One: All results from the rock chip sampling programme, arranged by prospect and highest to lowest value Au g/t Au.

(blank denotes below detection limit)

Locations stated in GDA94 Z55 grid

Previously announced results indicated by *

The AuEq value is determined by a multiplication factor of Au g/t + (Sb% x 1.9)

N/A = not available