American Pacific Mining Corp. (“American Pacific”) announces that Kennecott Exploration Company (“Kennecott”), a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group (“Rio Tinto” or “Rio”), in collaboration with American Pacific, has agreed to discontinue the 11-year Madison earn-in agreement to acquire a 70% interest in American Pacific’s Madison Mine Project (“Madison” or the “Project”). American Pacific would like to thank the regional Kennecott team for its collaborative approach at Madison over the years. The Company is pleased to regain 100% ownership and control of Madison, which now becomes the Company’s lead solely owned property.
Warwick Smith, American Pacific’s Chief Executive Officer stated:
“I’d like to start by emphasizing what an excellent partner Rio Tinto has been. We would have naturally liked to see the partnership continue with Rio funding exploration more aggressively, but given the dynamics of the underlying option term and Kennecott’s priorities, regaining 100% control of the Madison Project is a positive development, as it provides American Pacific with an excellent opportunity to advance the Project more rapidly with shareholders now having 100% exposure to new drill results and Project success. We recently collaborated to define a series of shallow priority targets and have a permitted drill program targeting high-grade copper and gold that American Pacific plans to commence as soon as weather permits.”
The Madison Project was host to small-scale production, which concluded in 2012 with 2.7 million pounds of copper (“Cu”) produced at grades ranging from 20-35% copper. Subsequent drilling at Madison in 2017 included 30.18 meters (“m”) of 24.50 grams per tonne (“g/t”) gold (“Au”) and 0.39% Cu and 10.97 m of 41.65 g/t Au and 0.38% Cu (UG17-05 and UG17-06, respectively). Full disclosure can be found in the Company’s NI 43-101 43-101 Technical Report for the Madison Project (americanpacificmining.com)
Drilling in 2017 also included a drill hole (C17-24) completed to 377 m depth, which intersected altered latite porphyry material at 301 m and has yet to be followed up on. The final drill hole from the last drill campaign completed by Rio intersected 6.53 m of 14.44 g/t Au and 0.11% Cu in an area that remains open approximately 100 m down plunge from the known skarn mineralization (see press release dated January 12, 2022).
The Company intends to proceed with the 2024 drill program as planned in collaboration with Kennecott. The program has been designed to include drill holes within the skarn that will aim to confirm and extend mineralization encountered in historical drilling (C05-06: 14.69 m of 12.10 g/t Au and further downhole 61.63 m of 6.97% Cu. Full disclosure can be found in the Company’s NI 43-101 43-101 Technical Report for the Madison Project (americanpacificmining.com). The 2024 drill program is also expected to include one to two shallow drill holes within a regional target area that has yet to be tested since the completion of geophysical surveys (see press release January 19th, 2022).
Qualified Person Statement
Technical aspects of this press release have been reviewed and approved by the designated Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, Eric Saderholm, P.Geo.
American Pacific Mining CEO Warwick Smith & President Joness Lang comment on February 5th news. Video Credit: American Pacific Mining Corp