The Valle Ancho Project is a significant land package located in the Province of Catamarca, Argentina that covers approximately 1,000 km2 of underexplored and highly prospective ground on the Argentinian side of Chile’s Maricunga Gold Belt. More than 100 million ounces of gold have been defined on the Chilean side of the border whereas the Argentinian side has seen much less exploration despite having similar geology. NGEx has a 100% interest in the Project following completion of an earn-in with the Province of Catamarca in 2022.
The project area was initially explored in the 1990’s resulting in the identification of several interesting gold and copper-gold targets. While not independently verified by the Company, historical drill intercepts include 62 metres at 1.0 g/t gold, and 108 metres at 1.0 g/t gold. Despite the encouraging results obtained by earlier explorers the area was not available for exploration for most of the last 20 years. The main targets lie along a major northwest trending structural corridor called the Valle Ancho Lineament. Many of the major deposits in the Andes are spatially related to similar northwest trending lineaments.
The Company carried out an initial field program at the Valle Ancho Project during the 2019/2020 Southern Hemispshere Summer, and followed up with a 3,060 metre, 8-hole diamond drill program during the 2021/2022 field season to test high priority exploration targets.
The 2021/2022 drill campaign at the Valle Ancho Project confirmed the discovery of a new copper-gold porphyry system at the La Quebrada target with an intersection of 596.5 metres grading 0.50% copper equivalent (0.23% copper, 0.37 g/t gold, 1.4 g/t silver). In addition, the two holes completed at the Nordin target, VADH001 and VADH002, returned 150 metres at 1.05 g/t gold from surface, and 198 metres at 0.63 g/t gold from surface, respectively.
While the discoveries at Valle Ancho are encouraging and positive confirmation of the prospectivity of the broader land package, additional work will be required to better understand extent, geometry and controls of this mineralization.
