Feb 28 2019
QMC Quantum Minerals Corp. reports that with diamond drill and support crew on-site, the primary phase of holes has been finished at the 100%-owned Irgon Lithium Mine Project of the company situated within the productive Cat Lake-Winnipeg River rare-element pegmatite field of S.E. Manitoba, which also hosts Cabot Corporation’s nearby Tantalum Mining Corporation of Canada (TANCO) rare-element pegmatite.
QMC on-site personnel reported visual spodumene, and the core has been moved to a secure, off-site place for logging, cutting, and sampling.
QMC is presently in the process of finishing Phase One of a two-phase drill program intended to verify and then expand the historic resource published for the Irgon Property (1.2 million tons grading 1.51% Li2O as formerly calculated for Lithium Corporation of Canada (LCOC)). Phase One of the QMC program comprises of 1500 m of NQ drilling in 12 holes. The first eight holes will ratify grades and widths documented by the historic 1953/54 drill results. These data, acquired in the 1950s, were derived from sampling of pegmatite intersections in the core from 25 historic drill holes and from underground channel samples that were gathered across the dike from within the presently inaccessible, water-filled workings. The other four proposed holes will check the Irgon Dike westward from the area hosting the primary resource to test the spodumene-bearing pegmatites identified as the Western Extension of the Irgon Dike, thus validating the westward continuity of the Irgon Dike.
With the findings of the Phase One drilling in hand, QMC has asked its consultant, SGS Canada, to produce an updated NI 43-101 compliant inferred resource for the central, formerly developed, section of the Irgon Dike. Furthermore, both QMC and SGS suppose drill testing the recently identified, westward extension of the Irgon Dike will add extra inferred tonnage to the historic resource published by LCOC for the property.
As with the earlier Irgon channel sampling program, QMC will request an examination for 56 elements using a sodium peroxide fusion followed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES/ICP-MS).
The Phase Two program, developed to test extra targets on the property, will be next.
Historical Resource
Between the years 1953 and 1954, the LCOC drilled 25 holes into the Irgon Dike and then reported a historical resource estimate of 1.2 million tons grading 1.51% Li20 over a strike length of 365 m and to a depth of 213 m (Northern Miner, Vol. 41, no.19, Aug. 4, 1955, p.3). This historical resource is documented in a 1956 Assessment Report by B. B. Bannatyne for the Lithium Corporation of Canada Ltd. (Manitoba Assessment Report No. 94932). This historical estimate is said to be based on rational assumptions, and neither the company nor the QP has any motive to challenge the document’s reliability and relevance. The complete channel sampling and a follow-up drill program will be required to inform this historical resource to present NI 43-101 standards. Historic metallurgical tests conveyed an 87% recovery from which a concentrate averaging 5.9% Li2O was acquired.
During this historical 1950s-period work program, a comprehensive mining plant was set up on-site, designed to process 500 tons of ore daily, and a three-compartment shaft was sunk to a depth of 74 m. On the 61-meter level, lateral development was extended off the shaft for a total of 366 m of drifting, from which seven crosscuts divided the dike. The work was postponed in 1957 anticipating a more promising market for lithium oxides. The mine buildings were taken down during this time.
The mineral reserve mentioned above is shown as a historical estimate and uses historical terminology which does not match with present NI 43-101 standards. A qualified person has not done adequate work to categorize the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. Although the historical estimates are said to be founded on rational assumptions, they were calculated before the execution of National Instrument 43-101. These historical estimates do not match present standards as prescribed under sections 1.2 and 1.3 of NI 43-101; therefore, the issuer is not taking the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves.
Qualified Person and NI 43-101 Disclosure
This news release’s technical content has been studied and approved by Bruce E. Goad, P. Geo., who is a qualified person as stipulated in National Instrument 43-101.