MetalCORP cuts high-grade platinum at North Rock (March 20, 2006)

Vancouver — Drilling on its North Rock project, 25 km east of Fort Frances in northwestern Ontario, has turned up a new discovery of high-grade platinum mineralization for MetalCORP (MTC-V, MTLCF-O).

The 21-hole drill program testing the East zone, located 1.5 km northeast and along strike of the Beaver Pond zone, returned up to 3.7 metres (from 151.9 metres down-hole) grading 12.2 grams platinum per tonne, 0.6% copper and 0.2% nickel in hole 20. The intercept included two half-metre intervals averaging 22.4 and 46.1 grams platinum, respectively.

The mineralized zone occurs in the hanging wall to the East zone and consists of 6-8% stringers and disseminated pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite at the contact of mafic volcanics and a coarse-grained gabbro.

North Rock is underlain by the 20-km long Grassy Portage layered mafic intrusive that hosts several magmatic copper-nickel sulphide deposits situated within paleo-depressions in the basal portion of the complex. The largest deposit, the Beaver Pond zone, contains a historical (1973) unclassified resource estimate of over 900,000 tonnes grading 1.2% copper (non-compliant with National Instrument 43-101). The latest discovery illustrates a platinum group metal (PGM) rich component in the intrusive that tends to be concentrated at the contact of mafic and ultramafic volcanics with a fine-grained gabbro. There are also some PGM occurrences higher in the sequence, up to 500 metres from the base of the intrusive.

PGM mineralization at North Rock is atypical for Archean copper-nickel-PGM as it exhibits a much higher platinum to palladium ratio.

Meanwhile, about 500 km east, drilling on MetalCORP’s Hemlo, Ont.-area Big Lake project has returned grades of up to 7.5% copper, 2.2% zinc, 138 grams silver per tonne and 9.2 grams gold over 4 metres of massive sulphide in hole BL06-24. The intercept, from the BL14 zone, included a 0.8-metre interval of 10.5% copper, 3.1% zinc, 216 grams silver and 31.1 grams gold. The BL14 zone was also intersected in drill hole BL06-23, yielding 3.1 metres of 3.7% copper, 2.2% zinc, 81 grams silver and 1.5 grams gold.

Big Lake is a volcanic-hosted massive sulphide system occurring in an intensely altered breccia zone within a hydrothermally altered assemblage of mafic volcanics, interflow clastic sediments and banded cherts.

Shares of MetalCORP rallied on the results coming from both projects, trading up 89%, or 65, to close at $1.38 on volume of 1.5 million.