Marathon PGM drills at Geordie Lake

Marathon PGM (MAR-T) has intersected some solid copper-platinum group metal grades at its Geordie Lake deposit near Marathon, Ont.

The deposit is just 15 km away from the company’s Marathon project where it’s planning to build a 22,000-tonne-per-day open pit copper-pgm mine.

The company is in the middle of a 21-hole, 3,000-metre drill program at Geordie Lake and results have shown significant hits of mineralization.

Highlights so far include is a 28-metre interval grading 0.46% copper, 0.61 gram palladium per tonne, 0.03 gram platinum, 0.05 gram gold and 1.9 grams silver.

The deposit is similar to the Marathon deposit with thick intervals of gabbro-hosted PGM-copper mineralization that dip at 45 to 60 degrees and would be amenable to open pit mining. The company says the most recent drilling confirms that mineralization outlined in deeper historical drilling extends up dip to near surface.

The plan is to put out a new resource estimate later this year. So far tonnage is about a quarter of the size of the entire Marathon project so eventually it could add significantly to the project life.

The focus of the 2010 program is on a higher-grade copper zone that was discovered during previous drilling but all of the assays announces so far are not in this zone.

Geordie measured and indicated resources stand at 25.99 million tonnes grading 0.35% copper, 0.55 gram palladium, 0.03 gram platinum, 0.05 gram gold and 2.35 grams silver per tonne for 195.7 million lbs. copper, 456,800 oz. palladium, 28,400 oz. platinum, 45,800 oz. gold and 1.94 million oz. silver. This resource was last updated in mid-2008.