New results support Pine Point upgrade

Osisko Metals Inc. April 4 reported results from an additional 34 drill holes drilled in the East Mill zone at the Pine Point zinc project in Northwest Territories.

Located about 42 kilometers (26 miles) east of Hay River, Pine Point is the site of a historical mine operated by Cominco (now Teck Resources) from 1964 to 1988. During that time, Cominco mined zinc-lead ore from a series of 50 surface and underground deposits along a 60-kilometer (37 miles) trend. In all, Cominco discovered roughly 90 such deposits on the property.

According to a December calculation, Pine Point hosts 38.4 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.58 percent (3.9 billion pounds) zinc and 1.85 percent (1.6 billion lb) lead.

The property's East Mill zone hosts 5.5 million metric tons of this inferred resource averaging 3.76 percent zinc and 1.9 percent lead.

This latest round of results is from holes drilled in the vicinity K-35-01, one of the historically mined pits within the East Mill zone.

Highlighted intercepts from the 34 holes reported, include:

• 8.8 meters of 6.3 percent zinc and 6.64 percent lead in hole EM-18-PP-226;

• six meters of 7.37 percent zinc and 4.56 percent lead in EM-18-PP-221; and

• 8.1 meters of 4.83 percent zinc and 0.83 percent lead in EM-18-PP-193.

The zinc and lead mineralization encountered in this drilling is within 45 meters of surface, making it amenable to low-cost open-pit mining.

"These new results continue to confirm the consistency and excellent grade of the near-surface mineralization at Pine Point and further supports our objective to upgrade a significant portion of the resource base to indicated category in the upcoming 2019 MRE (mineral resource estimate)," said Osisko Metals President and CEO Jeff Hussey.

Going into 2019, the company had completed 41,379 meters of drilling in 605 holes that are not included in the previous resource calculation. It is believed that this drilling will upgrade a significant portion of the inferred resources to the higher confidence indicated category.

Once an indicated resource is established for Pine Point, Osisko intends to begin investigating the economics of resuming mining on this historical zinc producing property.

Due to infrastructure from the previous mining, which includes an electrical substation in the middle of the property, and the project's proximity to Hay River, a hub with rail transportation and other services, Pine Point has a number of advantages to becoming a source for global zinc needs.

Osisko Metals is continuing resource definition drilling at Pine Point this year and will carry out a separate brownfield exploration program after completing a digital compilation and re-interpretation of the historical geological data from the property.

–SHANE LASLEY