Under Mustard, Mantle keeps working away at Akie

Vancouver – Mantle Resources (MTS-V) is carving out a name for itself among junior explorers. Results from the most recent hole at the companys Akie property in northeastern B.C. show some of the highest zinc, lead, and silver grades encountered to date on the property, and a $2-million brokered private placement gives the company the capital it needs to move ahead at Akie.

The Mantle story has been slowly developing for some time. Promising results from the 2006 drill campaign prompted Lundin Mining to take a 10% interest in the company in late 2006. Through 2007 the company has closed a series of small financings and engineered a takeover of Ecstall Mining in order to consolidate Mantles hold on the Kechika zinc-lead basin.

This past summer the company spent $10 million exploring and drilling at Akie. Results from three holes have since been released. The latest hole, number 45, returned 32 metres from 512 metres depth grading 15.35% zinc, 3.4% lead, and 25.24 grams silver per tonne. Hole 42 intersected 11.3 metres starting 667 metres downhole grading 13.83% zinc, 3.24% lead, and 21.11 grams silver, while hole 43 cut 27.6 metres grading 12.2% zinc, 2.99% lead, and 20.01 grams silver from 544 metres depth.

Mantle also just announced a private placement of up to 1.25 million shares at $1.60 apiece for gross proceeds of up to $2 million, to continue to fund Akie exploration.

Mineralization at Akie is sedimentary exhalative (Sedex) zinc-lead-silver. The Sedex deposit occurs at the base of a northwest-trending, steeply southwest-dipping, 500-metre wide package of folded shales and siltstones referred to as the Gunsteel Formation, and consists of a sheet-like body of laminated, fine-grained, massive pyrite-sphalerite-galena-barite mineralization.

To date Mantle has defined a 700-metre strike length, still open at both ends, and estimates true thickness at between 10 and 30 metres. The company had three drills on site this year, and plans to double that next season.

In addition, the company recently applied to extend the Akie forestry logging road. The 16-km road would follow a route previously designed by the local logging company and would, if approved, provide surface access to the main Akie zone, called Cardiac Creek. Currently all drilling is helicopter supported; since the company plans considerable drilling for next year a road would significantly reduce costs.

This project needs a lot more drilling, says Mantle president and CEO Jim Mustard. Technically there are challenges thrust faults, drill that deviate at depth but this is such an exciting project.

Mustard is, in fact, another significant part of the Mantle story. He joined the company in mid-September after 11 years with Haywood Securities, many of those years spent as a vice president and senior mining analyst. Motivation for the career change was both personal and professional.

Id been a mining analyst for a long time Id been all over the world, numerous times, he says. It was time for a change. And I just got excited about this opportunity. I looked at this district and saw a lot of unfinished business, and so a lot of possibility.

Mustard believes that the Kechika Trough remains highly under-explored not for geologic reasons but because corporate takeovers left key assets in the wrong hands, and then declining metal prices took the last breath of wind out of explorers sails. Now he is head of a company that holds an extensive land package in the region Mantle holds 84,000 hectares outright and has another 18,200 hectares under option, all together controlling 180 km of the Kechika Trough.

Im frightened by the amount of work there is to do here, he says. It is my intent to have a dedicated budget and exploration team not for Akie but for the rest of the district. Theres no reason why there shouldnt be other similar deposits in the area.