Minfocus unveils encouraging results from British Columbia zinc property

Minfocus Exploration Corp. [MFX-TSXV] said Friday December 22 that it has completed its initial field program at its Peregrine zinc property in southeastern British Columbia. Minfocus is focused on the advancement of a portfolio of zinc projects in B.C. It also has a Platinum Group Element-rich nickel project in northwestern Ontario. The company’s President and CEO is Gerald Harper, who was President of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada from 1998 to 2000.

At the Peregrine property, the company said recent work relocated an area of historic trenching from which several samples were collected, assaying 13.0 to 39.5% zinc. The company said a geochemical soil survey has demonstrated a strong zinc anomaly, extending the full 650 metres of the surveyed area.

Minfocus can earn a 100% interest in the Peregrine property over two years in one part of the project by making option payments of $10,000 cash and issuing 1 million shares, plus the grant of a 2% net smelter return (NSR) royalty.

The junior can repurchase up to one-half of the NSR for $1 million following commercial production. The balance of the property has been staked by Minfocus.

The initial discovery of lead-zinc mineralization on the Peregrine property dates back to the 1970s with the most recent exploration being historic work from 1986 by the company formerly known as Cominco Ltd.  However, regional exploration throughout British Columbia mostly ceased around that time due to weak metal prices.

Historical chip sampling of a showing by Cominco in 1986, using one-metre intervals, channelled across breccia zones in the Cambrian-age Jubilee Formation assayed 11.7% zinc over 1.7 metres. Historical geochemical surveys indicate widespread very high zinc values in soils.

A Minfocus exploration team relocated the showing and collected several grab samples from the zinc mineralized exposures in a blasted area. Zinc assays ran as high as 31%, the company said.

The exploration team also soil sampled an area of 1,000 to 700 metres along the strike length of the potential mineralized host and identified a strong soil anomaly along 650 metres of the favourable host horizon. The highest zinc values were over 3,000 parts per million and were supported by a coincident lead anomaly.

The company said the survey was stopped at the claim boundary, and now that the anomaly is known to extend further, additional claims have been acquired so that the geochemical program can be extended to determine the full extent of this anomaly.

Minfocus shares were unchanged at $0.025 on the TSX Venture Exchange in early trading Friday.