Imperial Acquires Mineral Claims Expanding its Sustut Property

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imperial Metals Corporation (the “Company”), has acquired four mineral claims totalling 6,834.47 hectares from Freeport-McMoRan Mineral Properties Canada Inc. for the consideration of claim assessment work expenditures and a 0.5% Net Smelter Return royalty.

The acquired claims are contiguous with the Company’s Sustut property which is held by Selkirk Metals Corp. (“Selkirk”), a wholly owned subsidiary. It is located in northcentral British Columbia, approximately 40 kilometres south of the Kemess Mine. The newly acquired claims cover two Minfile occurrences, the A Bornite (094D 038) and A Chalcocite (094D057) which consist of fracture-controlled copper-silver mineralization of bornite and chalcocite hosted in the Upper Triassic Savage Mountain Formation, the same host as the Sustut Copper Deposit.

The Sustut mineralization host volcaniclastic unit is a highly variable sequence of rocks ranging from augite porphyry basalt to andesite in composition with a strike averaging 100 degrees and dipping 15 degrees to the southwest. The copper mineralization occurs in several stratiform and sub-parallel lenses which are up to 45 metres thick and conformable to the average bedding attitudes. Mineralization consists of hematite, pyrite, chalcocite, bornite, chalcopyrite and minor native copper. The Sustut deposit is divided into two main zones, the North Zone and the South Zone, which are separated by the deeply incised East Cirque. The North Zone covers an area of approximately 900 by 700 metres, while the South Zone has been defined over an area of 800 by 1,000 metres. Much of the deposit is near surface and may be mineable by open pit. The focus of the metallurgical test work and the resource tabulated below is confined to the South Zone, where the majority of the drilling has occurred.

During 2021 Selkirk retained ABH Engineering to complete X-Ray Transmission (XRT) testing on Sustut samples of mineralization from drill core to determine if XRT particle sorting could be used to reduce the volume and increase the grade of the feed to a concentrator. The XRT particle sorting study was conducted using 244 core samples from previous drilling. The XRT scans were conducted using the TOMRA sorter at the Saskatchewan Research Council.