Jun 3 2015
SOCIÉTÉ D'EXPLORATION MINIÈRE VIOR INC. (the "Company" or "Vior") - The Company is pleased to announce the start of its 2015 exploration field program on its wholly-owned Foothills rutile project, in the St-Urbain area, located 100 kilometers east of Quebec City.
The program consists of a ground follow-up, including mapping and sampling on magnetic targets generated from the high-resolution helicopter-borne magnetic survey carried out by Novatem Inc. in winter 2015 on the Foothills project (press release of February 20, 2015). The magnetic survey covered an area of 107 km2 totaling 2,357 kilometers of flight lines at a 50-meter spacing between lines.
More than 200 magnetic anomalies compiled into 16 distinctive swarms were defined and grouped according to their spatial orientations and their geological features. These swarms of magnetic anomalies that may correspond to outcropping zones of rutile-rich ilmenite cumulates located within and at the boundary of the St-Urbain Anorthosite Complex, will be visited and surveyed during this campaign. Many of the swarms of magnetic anomalies are found up-ice or near the rutile-rich ilmenite block trains identified on the project, those of which yielded TiO2 (titanium) contents ranging between 42.1% and 57.6%, with an average of 52.5%.
The determination of the magnetic anomalies was conducted using a unique method of magnetic enhancement developed by MB Geosolutions and a 3D magnetic vectorial inversion (MVI), which considers the induced magnetization and the remanent magnetization. This processing of the apparent remanent magnetization brings out magnetic anomalies which appeared to be very weak positive anomalies or negative anomalies in conventional processing.
The follow-up field program will last several weeks and could be repeated during the summer.
In the industry, most of rutile and ilmenite is processed into non-toxic white titanium dioxide pigment for use in the manufacture of paints, plastics, paper, textiles, cosmetics and ceramics. Rutile is also used to produce titanium metal for use in aircraft, spacecraft, surgical implants, motor vehicles and desalination plants (source: Geoscience Australia website). The forecast for the price of the rutile on the market is estimated between US$1,110 and US$1,500 / tonne for the years 2015 to 2017 (sources: RBC Capital Markets' Estimates and Crédit Suisse).
Company Profile
In February 2015, Vior proceeded to the first share consolidation of the Company since its inception in 1984. Despite the poor market conditions, the Company is in a very good shape to move forward with its exploration activities with a new structure of 22,704,346 shares outstanding (25,307,346 fully diluted) and a working capital of $1,647,015 (as at March 31, 2015). The Company also owns 20,685,800 shares of Aurvista Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:AVA) representing a carrying value of $1,018,290 (as at May 29, 2015).
Vior's strategy is to generate, explore and develop quality projects in the best proven an accessible mining areas. The Company owns approximately 29.8% of the share capital of Aurvista Gold Corp., the owner of the gold Douay project, which contains a Mineral Resource of 114,652,000 million tonnes at 0.75 g/t gold (2.8 million ounces of gold) in the Inferred category and 2,689,000 tonnes at 2.76 g/t gold (238,433 ounces of gold) in the Measured and Indicated categories, at a cut-off of 0.3 g/t gold (Aurvista press release of October 16, 2014).
This press release was prepared by Mr. Marc L'Heureux, P.Geo. who is the Company's Qualified Person.