Candente ups interests in Peru (February 21, 2002)

Vancouver — Candente Resource (DNT-V) has acquired the remaining 50% interest it does not already own in the Lunahuana, El Tigre and Las Sorpresas gold properties in Peru.

The Joanne Freeze led junior picked up the additional stake by issuing 500,000 shares to Nanotek (NTK-V), formerly known as Britannia Gold.

Lunahuana lies 2 hours southeast of Lima, is considered prospective for iron-oxide-copper-gold mineralization similar to Olympic Dam deposit in Australia. Previous explorers spent US$500,000 on stream sediment sampling, prospecting, geological mapping, rock chip and soil sampling, as well as geophysical surveys. Anomalous copper and gold values were found in stream sediments over a 7-by-2 km area. . So far, Candente has defined three drill targets on the property

Moving to the northern part of the country, exploration work at the El Tigre property has identified three distinct zones of gold mineralization over an area measuring 2-by-1 km. The gold occurs in quartz veins and veinlets crosscutting a stratiform sequence of volcanic and sedimentary rocks. A large granodioritic intrusive complex has intruded the sequence.

Bordering the southern edge of Newmont Mining’s (NEM-N) Yanacocha Mines property, the Las Sorpresas contains anomalous gold-in-stream values ranging up to 789 parts per billion, as well as anomalous mercury-in-soil values near the centre of the property.