Navarre Creek land position increased

Phoenix Copper Limited / Ticker: PXC / Sector: Mining

11 August 2021

Phoenix Copper Limited

("Phoenix" or the "Company")

Navarre Creek land position increased from 2,420 to 3,577 acres (9.80 to 14.48 square kilometres)

Phoenix Copper Ltd (AIM: PXC, OTCQX: PXCLF), the AIM quoted USA focused base and precious metals emerging producer and exploration company, is pleased to announce an increase in its land holding at its Navarre Creek gold exploration project, in Idaho, with 56 new claims having been staked on the northeast end of the existing claim block.  

Highlights:

·    The Company has increased its land position by an additional 1,157 acres (4.68 square kilometres ("km²")) at its Navarre Creek Carlin-type gold exploration project

·    56 new unpatented claims have been staked and filed contiguous to the existing Navarre Creek claim block

·    The total land package in the Empire Mine area has been expanded to 8,034 acres (32.51 km²)

·    Electromagnetic ("EM") surveys at Navarre Creek, Red Star and Horseshoe have been completed and are awaiting the final geophysicist report scheduled for late August 

·    2,300 metres of reverse-circulation drilling planned at Navarre Creek for later this year

Ryan McDermott, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "As a result of our own internal analysis of the preliminary data from the EM survey, we are pleased to announce the addition of 56 unpatented mining claims to the Navarre Creek claim block. These claims are contiguous and bring the total land holding at Navarre Creek to 3,577 acres. The additional acreage was added on the northeast end of the Navarre block and covers additional prospective ground. The additional claims will be important for executing future drilling and subsurface exploration, and follow on from the promising surface sampling campaign in 2020, which demonstrated anomalously high gold grades in the initial geochemical  samples, indicative of higher-grade values in less weathered rocks below the surface oxidised zone. These grades were similar to the historic grades encountered in some of the early exploration phases of the now multi-million ounce Carlin-style, volcanic-hosted gold deposits in northern Nevada.  

"We look forward to reporting the final EM interpretation, as well as reporting results from the ongoing drilling programs at Empire."  

Navarre Creek

During the summer of 2020, Konnex Resources' exploration team mapped and sampled the Company's Navarre Creek gold property, which was then comprised of 2,420 acres of unpatented mining claims, located approximately five kilometres north-northwest of the Empire Mine.  90 rock chip and grab samples were collected in the hydrothermally altered volcanic rocks that make up the Navarre Creek claims and sent to ALS Laboratories in Reno, USA for geochemical analysis.

Of the 90 samples, 53 were above the detection limit for gold with a high of 0.569 grammes per tonne ("g/t"), and 25 above the detection limit for silver.  There was also a strong correlation between elevated gold values and elevated antimony values, typical in volcanic hosted, Carlin-type epithermal gold systems.  With the exception of one sample, all samples with a gold value greater than 0.1 g/t occur within the same alteration type, that being predominantly a jasperoid-hosted quartz stockwork and micro-veining system. This provides valuable information for future sampling and drill targeting.  The quartz stockworking and micro-veining appear to occur predominantly in felsic volcanic tuff units in the Navarre Creek area.  One anomalous sample, 32519, registered a gold value of 0.387 g/t, in a magnetite skarn sample located on the southern end of the Navarre Creek claim block where the skarn body occurs as subcrop through the surface volcanics tuffs. Additionally, the presence of limestone in surface float near the skarn sample location is evidence that the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks that occur at the Empire Mine may be near the surface.  The Empire orebody is partly comprised of a magnetite skarn body hosted in Paleozoic limestone.  Additional sampling is planned to be conducted in the area around sample 32519, as well as a ground magnetics survey, which has been completed and the final geophysicist report expected.  It was also noted that volcanic outcropping across the Navarre Creek area is strongly weathered and highly leached to depths of two to four metres.

The Navarre Creek claim block now covers 3,577 acres (14.48 km²), representing over six kilometres of prospective gold strike length, including an area of secondary alteration thought to be epithermal in nature, with over 2.5-kilometres of highly brecciated, west-trending jasperoid intersecting  argillically and silicically altered Eocene Challis volcanics. The altered volcanic rocks are similar in nature to the volcanic hosted, Carlin-type epithermal gold systems found in neighbouring Nevada, host to numerous multi-million ounce gold deposits.

2021 Drilling Programmes

The 2021 drilling plan includes 4,500 metres of diamond core into the historically mined high grade Empire underground sulphide copper deposit, 2,300 metres of reverse-circulation drilling at the Navarre Creek gold zone, 3,000 metres of diamond core at the high-grade silver-lead Red Star and Horseshoe/White Knob targets, and 3,000 metres of dual-rotary drilling for hydrological characterisation as part of the development of the Empire Mine open pit deposit.

Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance

Phoenix is committed to meeting and exceeding the environmental standards required by law as a core value of the Company.  The baseline environmental data collected to date will be used for furthering the permitting process, but as importantly, will be used as the building blocks for the Company's future Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance ("ESG") platform.

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 ("MAR") which has been incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Upon the publication of this announcement via Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

Contacts

For further information please visit https://phoenixcopperlimited.com or contact:

Notes

Phoenix Copper Limited is a USA focused, base and precious metals emerging producer and exploration company, initially targeting copper and zinc production from an open pit mine from late 2022.

Phoenix's primary operations are focused near Mackay, Idaho, in the Alder Creek mining district, at the 80% owned Empire Mine property, which historically produced copper at grades of up to 8%, as well as gold, silver, zinc and tungsten, from an underground mine. 

Since 2017, Phoenix has carried our extensive drill programmes which have defined a NI 43-101 compliant PEA (preliminary economic assessment) for an open pit heap leach solvent extraction and electrowinning ("SX-EW") mine, which was updated in October 2020. The contained metal in all NI 43-101 compliant categories of resources, measured, indicated and inferred, stand at 129,641 tonnes of copper, 355,523 ounces of gold, 10,133,772 ounces of silver and 58,440 tonnes of zinc. Phoenix updated its economic model in February 2021 to include the processing of all contained metals through a two phased approach.

In addition to Empire, the district includes the historic Horseshoe, White Knob and Blue Bird Mines, past producers of copper, gold, silver, zinc, lead and tungsten from underground mines.  A new discovery at Red Star, 330 metres north west of the Empire Mine proposed open pit, has revealed high grade silver / lead sulphide ore and from three shallow exploration drill holes a NI 43-101 compliant maiden resource of 1.6 million silver equivalent ounces was reported. Additionally, the district includes Navarre Creek, a volcanic hosted, Carlin-type gold discovery which hosts a 6.1 km gold strike length within a 14.48 km² area. The Company's total land package at Empire comprises 8,034 acres (32.51 sq kms).

At Empire, it is estimated that less than 1% of the potential ore system has been explored to date and, accordingly, there is significant opportunity to increase the resource through phased exploration. The stated aim of the Company is to fund this phased exploration through free cashflow generated by its initial mine. A Plan of Operations in respect of the initial open pit mine was filed with the relevant regulatory authorities in June 2021.

Phoenix also has two wholly owned cobalt properties on the Idaho Cobalt Belt to the north of Empire. An Earn-In Agreement has been signed with First Cobalt Corporation, Toronto, in respect of one of those properties.

More details on the Company, its assets and its objectives can be found on PXC's website at https://phoenixcopperlimited.com.