Champion Minerals discovers new iron zone at Lac Moire (June 13, 2011)

The first five drill holes at the Lac Moire iron ore project in northeastern Quebec have identified significant new iron mineralization, and Champion Minerals (chm-t) has increased its drill program there to 7,000 metres. 

A new zone of mineralization was identified in drill hole 11-04, which intersected 130.2 metres grading 30.5% total iron and hole 11-05, which returned 133.5 metres of 28.9% total iron.

Twin hole 11-01 intersected 154.1 metres grading 30.7% total iron, confirming results from historic drill hole QE43 of 154.2 metres grading 29.9% total iron.

Lac Moire, about 4 km southwest of the town of Fermont, adjoins the east property boundary of ArcelorMittal‘s (mt-n) Mt. Wright iron mine and concentrator.

The Lac Moire property was explored in the 1950s and mid-1970s, and Champion wants to validate and expand the historic resource of 101.6 million tonnes grading 30.8% total iron. 

The junior explorer reviewed the original data, re-interpreted the historic geological model for the deposit and identified areas with favourable magnetic responses where there was no previous drilling. 

The re-interpreted geological model indicates the iron units defined by historic drilling around the perimeter of a semi-circular, ring-shaped magnetic anomaly converge inward, to be within potential mining depths in a much larger bowl-like synform. Drill holes 11-04 and 11-05 successfully intersected the iron units in the interpreted synform in the centre of the ring-shaped anomaly.

Hole 11-02 was drilled downdip from historic drill hole QL14, also on the eastern side of the magnetic anomaly, and intersected 101.9 metres grading 28.4% total iron.

Hole 11-03 was drilled about 100 metres along strike of historic holes QE55 and QE56 on the western side of the ring-shaped magnetic anomaly, and intersected a wide zone of lower grade iron mineralization that contained a higher grade interval of 59.4 metres grading 27.0% total iron.

Of Champion’s 17 properties in the Fermont area, seven host a total of 620 million tonnes grading 31% iron in historical resources.

Three others, the Fire Lake North, Bellechasse and Harvey-Tuttle projects, host 1.55 billion tonnes of National Instrument 43-101 compliant inferred resources grading 25.4% iron at a 15% cut-off – nearly a fivefold increase over the historic estimates. 

Champion hopes to achieve similar success converting historic resources into NI 43-101 compliant resources.

Champion holds an 82.5% interest in the Fermont iron property with Fancamp Exploration (fnc-v) holding the remaining 17.5%.

At presstime, Champion was trading at $2.20 per share, and over the last year has traded between a low of 70¢ (July 20, 2010) and a high of $3.30 (Feb. 4, 2011). The junior has about 82.9 million shares outstanding.