Tiberon expands Nui Phao

Vancouver — Junior Tiberon Minerals (TBR-V) reports that drilling at the Nui Phao polymetallic project in Vietnam has extended the mineralized zone to the southeast.

Hole 38, collared southeast of a previously drilled hole 26, cut 8 metres grading 0.53% tungsten trioxide, 0.35% copper and 0.28% bismuth, plus 0.57 gram gold per tonne, from 161 metres down-hole.

Hole 39 was collared 300 metres to the west, near hole 18, and cut four zones ranging up to 0.52% tungsten trioxide, 0.24% copper, 0.14% bismuth and 0.36 gram gold over 16 metres from 68 metres down-hole.

A further 80 metres to the west, hole 43 cut three zones, ranging up to 0.54% tungsten trioxide, 0.22% copper, 0.13% bismuth and 0.25 gram gold over 5.6 metres from 63.6 metres down-hole.

“With five drill rigs, we are rapidly advancing the project and expect to release the first resource calculations this fall,” says Loren Komperdo, Tiberon’s president.

The junior has completed a scoping study and aims to launch a bench-scale metallurgical study in the next couple of weeks.

Eyeing the development of the potential open-pit tungsten resource, drill results indicate that the zone is a flat-lying body up to 160 metres thick. It stretches for 2 km east-west and for 300-400 metres across.

Mineralization is hosted in skarns and their greisenized or retrograde equivalents. Greisenization refers to a replacement process whereby quartz, fluorine and micas — as well as accessory minerals such as tourmaline, rutile, cassiterite and wolframite — replace skarns or granites.

At Nui Phao, the greisenization consists of high-fluorine, beryllium, tungsten, tin and limited rare earth metals, which have replaced granitic dykes and earlier-formed skarn units.

The Nui Phao project is in the Dai Tu district of Thai Nguyen province, about 80 km northwest of Hanoi.