Akie holes consistently promising (January 21, 2008)

Vancouver — Results from another hole punched into the Akie zinc-lead project, in northeastern B.C., have again showed the potential the property holds for Mantle Resources (MTS-V, MTSZF-O).

Hole 49, the seventh hole drilled into the Cardiac Creek zone at Akie, significantly expanded the area of defined mineralization. The hole returned 20.2 metres grading 11.41% zinc, 2.24% lead and 15.36 grams silver per tonne from 332.4 metres depth. It was collared 170 metres updip from hole 30, which intersected 34.1 metres grading 11.87% zinc and 2.83% lead in 2005.

Mantle also announced the assay results from hole 46, an exploratory hole collared 250 metres from hole 42, designed to test the continuity of mineralization to the northwest. The drill cut two mineralized horizons separated by some 14 metres, a layout encountered in other holes in the northerly part of the zone. From 630 metres down-hole, the drill hit 27.4 metres grading 2.46% zinc, 0.33% lead and 4.9 grams silver; at 671 metres depth, the drill returned 2.12 metres grading 8.58% zinc, 1.86% lead and 14.67 grams silver.

Other highlights of the 2007 drill program at Akie include 37 metres grading 13.91% zinc, 3.07% lead and 22.94 grams silver from 508 metres depth in hole 45; and 11.3 metres of 13.83% zinc, 3.24% lead and 21.11 grams silver from 667 metres in hole 42.

The Cardiac Creek zone remains open for expansion north and south along strike as well as further updip. Mantle estimates that the true width of mineralization is roughly 78% of the core interval.

Mantle holds a 100% interest in the Akie project, which sits some 260 km northwest of the town of Mackenzie. The company had been earning in on the project from Ecstall Resources until it acquired Ecstall in early 2007, consolidating its hold on the Kechika zinc-lead basin.

Akie has garnered interest for some time but, until Mantle, no company dedicated exploration funding to the isolated project. In 1995, Inmet Mining (IMN-T, IEMMF-O) calculated a non-National Instrument 43-101-compliant inferred resource (based on only four widely spaced holes) of 13 million tonnes grading 8.5% zinc, 1.5% lead and 13.2 grams of silver over an average true thickness of 6.3 metres.

Mantle started drilling at Akie in 2005. By late 2006, drill results from the property prompted Lundin Mining (LUN-T, LMC-N) to take up a 10% interest in Mantle. In 2007, Mantle spent $10 million exploring Akie, and to keep the coffers filled, closed a series of small financings.

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.

The latest drill results affected Mantle’s share price only slightly: the junior closed down 2 or 2% at $1.05. The company’s shares have traded in a 52-week range of 83-$1.55 with 69.8 million shares issued.