ECR Minerals #ECR – Re-assay of Creswick Diamond Drill Core Reveals High Grade Results Including 0.7m @47.75 g/t Au

ECR Minerals plc (LON: ECR), the exploration and development company focused on gold in Australia, is pleased to announce results from a re-assay of selected diamond drill core from the Creswick diamond drilling program completed in 2021.

ECR Minerals plc has 100% ownership of the Creswick Project within licence area (EL006184), which resides 14km north-east of the City of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Company is exploring a number of parallel-gold mineralisation trends that are believed to extend 10km south towards Ballarat through two other tenements in hand, respectively (EL006907) and (EL006713). Licence EL006907 is approved for commencement of work whilst the EL006713 application has been accepted and is awaiting final approval from the Victoria State Government, at this stage there can be no guarantee that this licence will be granted but the Directors have every expectation it will be. All Creswick tenements are operated by the 100% owned Australian subsidiary company Mercator Gold Australia Pty. Ltd.(” MGA”).

ECR CEO Andrew Haythorpe commented: “On behalf of the board, we are delighted that a programme to retest the 2021 Creswick drill core has yielded these exceptionally good gold grades. On my visit to the Creswick tenements with Adam Jones earlier this year, I saw the potential on the ground for myself, and it was this that convinced me that our plan to retest the Creswick core samples was well justified.”

“The Board believes Creswick to be a valuable asset with great potential. We look forward to reporting back with the soil sample lab results and subsequent action plan in the coming weeks.”

HIGHLIGHTS

• Duplicate sampling of selected quartz-mineralised intercepts from the diamond drilling campaign of 2021 shows significant increase in reportable gold grades including;

• 7m @ 47.75 g/t Au from 147m in hole CSD001.
• 1m @ 6.13 g/t Au from 98m in hole CJD002.
• 1m @ 3.9 g/t Au from 86.5m, also in hole CJD002.

• Results from duplicate samples reveal the high variability of coarse gold present at Creswick.
• Sampling protocols are proving to be the right strategic method for continuing a sound and aggressive exploration method at Creswick.
• Ongoing surface exploration in the immediate area is testing for follow-up drill targets.

Link to a plan of the diamond drilling in 2021 can be found here in Figure 1:

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2022/fig1_Creswick_DD2021_Re-assay_221018.png

BACKGROUND

ECR Minerals completed a 16-hole diamond drill program on EL006184 during 2021. A total of 3433 metres of HQ sized, orientated diamond core was drilled. The location of the diamond drilling can be seen in Figure 1 above. As per standard industry practice, the original samples were half-sawn and submitted into the Gekko Laboratory, Ballarat to undergo bulk Leachwell analysis and fire-assay for gold content. The remnant other half of the sampled core is kept and preserved for future reference. The erratic and coarse nuggety nature of the gold particle size at Creswick was known from previous sampling campaigns in 2019 (see RNS ‘Update on Creswick Gold Project, Victoria, Australia dated 5 November 2019 here), where bulk sampling of RC Drilling residues showed the presence of coarse gold that was missed from initial sampling and subsequently improved the gold grades. With this knowledge, selected remaining half-core samples (known as duplicates) from the 2021 diamond drill campaign were recently submitted for further analysis.

DUPLICATE RESULTS

As suspected, the results from duplicating the diamond drilling also show high variability in gold grades. The best result came from duplicating a 70cm sample that originally assayed at 0.1 g/t Au in hole CSD001 from 147m drilled depth. In this case the duplicate returned 0.7m @ 47.75 g/t Au. Other results of note include 1.1m @ 6.13 g/t Au (originally assayed at 0.15 g/t Au) from 98m depth in hole CJD002. It must be also pointed out that some of the high-grade gold results in the original sampling did not replicate with the follow up duplicate samples. The Directors view this disparity as a positive sign, believing that it further confirms the nature of the coarse, high-grade gold style of mineralisation previously encountered. A full list of all duplicate results is listed in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Full list of all gold results (g/t Au) from the duplicate sampling of the 2021 diamond drilling campaign. A comparison of the duplicate assays to the original assays is shown by a positive or negative difference.

SUMMARY

As with the results from the 2019 bulk sampling testing, our results also prove the gold at Creswick is coarse and erratic, and as a result mineralisation sampling protocols must take these factors into account. Poor sampling practices could potentially jeopardise a gold project such as Creswick, so armed with this knowledge, previous results from past exploration companies could reveal new opportunities for missed targets.

The Directors believe that in addition to the presence of gold in drilling samples, the erratic nature of mineralisation at Creswick means that gold can also be found in soil and rock chip samples. Recently a suite of soil samples was submitted to the laboratory to test different sampling methodologies. The results will help decide if one (or multiple) methods will be used to target blind gold outcrops for follow-up drilling. Now the backlog in receiving lab samples has been dealt with, the Directors expect these sample results very soon.

REVIEW OF ANNOUNCEMENT BY QUALIFIED PERSON

This announcement has been reviewed by Adam Jones, Technical Director of Exploration at ECR Minerals plc. Adam Jones is a professional geologist and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (MAIG). He is a qualified person as that term is defined by the AIM Note for Mining, Oil and Gas Companies.

MARKET ABUSE REGULATIONS (EU) No. 596/2014

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 (MAR). Upon the publication of this announcement via Regulatory Information Service (RIS), this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

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ABOUT ECR MINERALS PLC

ECR Minerals is a mineral exploration and development company. ECR’s wholly owned Australian subsidiary Mercator Gold Australia Pty Ltd (“MGA”) has 100% ownership of the Bailieston and Creswick gold projects in central Victoria, Australia, has six licence applications outstanding which includes one licence application lodged in eastern Victoria. (Tambo gold project). MGA is currently drilling at the Bailieston Blue Moon Project (EL5433) and undertaking geochemical exploration on the Creswick (EL6148) project and has an experienced exploration team with significant local knowledge in the Victoria Goldfields and wider region.

https://mercatorgold.com.au/

ECR also owns 100% of an Australian subsidiary LUX Exploration Pty Ltd (“LUX”) which has three approved exploration permits covering 946 km² over a relatively unexplored area in Queensland, Australia.

https://luxexploration.com/

Following the sale of the Avoca, Moormbool and Timor gold projects in Victoria, Australia to Fosterville South Exploration Ltd (TSX-V: FSX) and the subsequent spin-out of the Avoca and Timor projects to Leviathan Gold Ltd (TSX-V: LVX), Mercator Gold Australia Pty Limited has the right to receive up to A$2 million in payments subject to future resource estimation or production from projects sold to Fosterville South Exploration Limited.

ECR holds a 70% interest in the Danglay gold project; an advanced exploration project located in a prolific gold and copper mining district in the north of the Philippines, which has a 43-101 compliant resource. ECR also holds a royalty on the SLM gold project in La Rioja Province, Argentina and can potentially receive up to US$2.7 million in aggregate across all licences.