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Indicated resource grows at McIlvenna Bay site, now over 39 million tonnes: Foran

Foran Mining appears to have found a much bigger resource at McIlvenna Bay than initially thought.
McIlvenna Bay Map
A map of Foran Mining's McIlvenna Bay property near Hanson Lake.

Foran Mining appears to have found a much bigger resource at McIlvenna Bay than initially thought.

According to an Oct. 14 announcement from the company, the initial indicated resource for the mine property about 60 kilometres from Flin Flon has grown by about 70 per cent.

“The 2021 resource estimate outlines significant changes to the resource at McIlvenna Bay compared to the previous resource estimate published in 2019, with over 25,000 metres of infill and expansion drilling in 36 holes completed since the prior estimate,” reads the Foran announcement.

“To date, the deposit has been defined by approximately 152,000 metres of drilling within 285 holes.”

In total, Foran now has the indicated resource of McIlvenna Bay listed at 39.1 million tonnes, up from 23 million tonnes, its previous listed resource. The company also stated a “significant increase” in indicated contained metal and mineralization starting about 25 metres below surface, extending about two kilometres down and remaining open in all directions.

Out of that 39.1 million tonne indicated resource, 22.7 million tonnes are in what Foran calls the “copper stockwork zone”, with 10.8 million in the main lens area. The resource estimate includes a total inferred resource of about five million tonnes.

For context, at its Flin Flon-area operations, Hudbay mined 255,170 tonnes of ore in the second quarter of 2021. At that pace - just over one million tonnes mined per year - the McIlvenna Bay project could, if the indicated resource holds true, dozens of other conditions are met and a mine is built, be mined for decades.

Foran’s own resource estimates for contained metal include 1,033 million pounds of indicated copper and 105 million pounds of inferred copper resource, with 1,863 million pounds indicated and 284 million pounds inferred of zinc and 18.1 million pounds indicated and 2.6 million pounds inferred of silver.

The company also announced it will release new regional exploration campaign plans for next year and a long-in-the-works feasibility study for the property.

Foran CEO and executive chairman Dan Myerson said the new findings make the McIlvenna Bay project a larger-scale proposition than the company had previously believed and would push work at the site ahead further.

“McIlvenna Bay has now proved itself to be a high-quality, large and cohesive deposit that will act as the first mining operation for our planned and scalable centralized processing facility at the Hanson Lake district,” said Myerson.

“We are now integrating the data from this resource estimate into our coming feasibility study and are planning for an aggressive and exciting exploration program in 2022.”

The McIlvenna Bay project is located around the south shore of Hanson Lake and is accessed via a gravel road from Highway 106.

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