Stelmine Canada Expands Mercator Project in Northern Quebec

Stelmine Canada, a junior mining exploration company, reports that a progressive field program prior to first-ever drilling at its wholly-owned Mercator Project in northern Quebec is concurrent with the preliminary study from a recently concluded geophysics survey of a possibly large-scale orogenic gold system.

New Mercator Highlights

• Further sampling has stretched the length of the Main Zone to around 2.5 km from 1.9 km. A shallow dipping mineralized slab present along a ridge inside this area currently extends to a width of around 500 m, from the earlier reported 400 m, and includes arsenopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite (assays pending).
• Geologists are uncovering a considerably new discovery area starting 16 km to the southwest of the Main Zone with similarities to the northeast-southwest trending lithological assemblage noted in the Main Zone. Currently, overburden stripping and channel sampling of this area to the southwest have been scheduled as grab samples gathered over 3 km revealed strong sulfide enrichment.
• Wide surface sampling this summer has been executed over a 21-km distance along with 243 samples gathered to date comprising over half outside the Main Zone, although multiple areas with favorable structures still need to be analyzed as part of the follow-up to the extremely encouraging geophysical survey.
• Remarkably, arsenopyrite has been found more in surface samples. This pathfinder mineral is frequently linked with gold in this kind of geological surrounding where amphibolites and meta-sediments have been mapped alongside ample faulted and folded iron formations.

Initially, Stelmine staked Mercator in 2017. In early 2021, depending on data gathered from last summer’s program, Stelmine stretched its Mercator land package five times from 65 km² to 389 km² via extra staking.

Mercator is roughly located 100 km to the northwest of the Company’s Courcy Project where drilling will soon track on the last drill hole, ended by SOQUEM in 2006, that returned a 42-m core interval grading 4.2 g/t Au including 1.5 m of 105 g/t Au.

Knowing the discovery drill hole at Courcy, our continued work in this region keeps reinforcing our belief that we have found an entirely new gold district in northern Quebec with geological similarities to Newmont’s Eleonore mine to the west at James Bay.

Ms Isabelle Proulx, CEO, Stelmine Canada

“The geophysical signatures of Mercator and the continuity that we are beginning to see with respect to surface mineralization are highly encouraging at this stage of exploration. Work continues as we prepare for drilling, and we eagerly anticipate additional updates,” added Proulx.