May 18 2015
GTA Resources and Mining Inc. provides an update on the Ivanhoe Property including results from recent field work, staking of additional claims and the exercise of year two of the Ivanhoe option agreement. This update also provides details of near-term plans for both Ivanhoe and the Northshore Property near Hemlo.
Ivanhoe
The Ivanhoe Property is located near Foleyet, Ontario between the recently discovered Borden Lake Gold Deposit and the prolific Timmins Gold Camp. The Borden Lake deposit, discovered by Probe Mines Limited, was recently acquired by Goldcorp Inc. as part of a deal valued at $526 million. Prior to the take-over in January, 2015, Probe had defined underground indicated resources of 1.6 million ounces of gold (9.3Mt @ 5.39g/t) and inferred resources of 0.4 million ounces of gold (3Mt @ 4.37g/t) at a 2.5g/t gold cut-off grade. (See Goldcorp's SEDAR page for technical details on Borden Lake). GTA's western claim boundary is within five kilometers of Probe Mines' "northeast extension" claims, along the interpreted Borden Lake gold trend.
Geologically, the Ivanhoe Property is located in the western portion of the Swayze Greenstone belt, proximal to the Kapuskasing High metamorphic terrain. It is underlain by rocks typical of the Timmins gold camp, and includes variably altered and deformed mafic and ultramafic volcanic rocks, intermixed with Timiskaming-type conglomerates and porphyry intrusives. GTA interprets the western extension of the Destor Porcupine Fault Zone to extend across the northern part of the Ivanhoe Property. Previous production in the area includes the historic Joburke Gold Mine which is surrounded by the GTA claim holdings. According to the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, the Joburke Mine produced close to 500,000 tons at a recovered grade of 3.4 g/t gold.
During this past winter / spring, GTA completed approximately 30 km of line cutting, followed by Induced Polarization (IP) and magnetometer surveying. The survey results outlined a number of discrete anomalies coincident with gold mineralization identified during the previous prospecting/geological work completed during the fall, 2014. The IP surveys outlined several high resistivity and chargeability targets interpreted to represent disseminated sulphide mineralization hosted within altered porphyritic rocks and/or other silicified lithologies. Further, these anomalies appear to coincide with known gold mineralized areas at the Montana, Utah, BP Porphyry and Tressle Targets. (See GTA press release dated December 9, 2014 for a detailed description of these gold zones.)
GTA interprets the results to date to be highly successful. Follow-up ground exploration, including detailed mapping, prospecting and sampling, is expected to begin shortly with a primary focus on the recently outlined geophysical anomalies. Diamond drill testing of these target areas is expected to commence late summer / early fall of this year.
As a result of these exploration successes at Ivanhoe, GTA has, as of May 5th, 2015, entered into year 2 of the Ivanhoe Option Agreement. Pursuant to the agreement, GTA can earn a 100% interest in Ivanhoe by making staged cash payments totaling $ 260,000 over 5 years, share issuances of 1,000,000 shares over 5 years, and incurring minimum exploration expenditures of $ 260,000 over two years. The optionors would retain a 3% Net Smelter Return, half of which can be purchased anytime for $1,5000,000. To date GTA has paid the optionors a total of $107,000 and 400,000 GTA shares.
GTA also increased the Ivanhoe land package by roughly 40%. Originally, the size of the Ivanhoe Property covered approximately 94 sq. km. GTA acquired 4 claims (47 units) in the central portion of the property in June, 2014, and an additional 13 claims (191 units) to the southwest in March, 2015. As a result, Ivanhoe now consists of 829 claims units covering an area of 132.58 km, making GTA one of the largest land holders with an active exploration program in the Borden Lake area. The latest claim addition covers an area interpreted by GTA to be the northeast extension of the Borden Lake gold trend.
More detailed information on each of these zones, including descriptions, full assay results, maps, sketches, photographs, etc., will be posted at the GTA website at www.gtaresources.com.
GTA is fully funded for this proposed exploration program having raised flow through funds earlier this fall (see GTA's press release of August 5, 2014).
Northshore
The Northshore Property, near Thunder Bay, Ontario, is GTA's flagship property. GTA owns 51% of and is the operator of Northshore, by way of a joint venture with Balmoral Resources Ltd.
In June, 2014 GTA filed a NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate on the Afric Zone portion of Northshore. Highlights included (using a cutoff grade of 0.50 grams gold per tonne):
- Indicated Category: 391,000 ounces gold in 12,360,000 tonnes at a grade of 0.99 g/t gold
- Inferred Category: 824,000 ounces gold in 29,580,000 tonnes at a grade of 0.87 g/t gold
- All resources are open for expansion
See GTA's press release of June 10, 2014 and the mineral resource estimate filed at SEDAR for details.
GTA has been modeling the Afric Zone with a view to isolating near surface - higher grade portions of the resource. Various scenarios are being evaluated including small open pit mining, trucking and custom milling. GTA does not yet have any definitive action plans and cautions that no such plans may ever be completed. Work will be conducted over the spring/summer to further GTA's modeling.
Robert Duess, P. Geo, VP Exploration for GTA and a qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, is responsible for this release, and supervised the preparation of the information forming the basis for this release.