Power Metallic Mines increases drill rigs to six at Nisk Project, Quebec

Power Metallic Mines Inc. [TSXV: PWM; OTCBB: PNPNF; FSE: IVV] provided an update on the current exploration activity (Q1 2025), and the planned scaling up of Nisk Project exploration programs beginning in Q2 2025. The Nisk Project is located approximately 55 km east from the Cree Nation of Nemaska Community in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay territory of northern Quebec.

With the recent equity raise the company’s exploration budget through the end of 2026 is more than $40 million based on flow-through proceeds raised. With this expenditure the company is targeting approximately 100,000 metres of drilling and other exploration programs over the next 21 months. The drilling will include extending the zones in the Lion and Tiger polymetallic areas; expansion of the Nisk deposit; and exploring the untested 5.5 km of strike between these areas.

There are currently three drill rigs, with increased drill capacity limited by current core logging and sampling facilities at site. To accelerate the exploration program, the company is in the midst of planning a complete revamp of the core logging facility to allow an increase to six drills. This expansion should be completed in May and allow scaling up to six drills starting in June.

The company will be continuing to use both borehole electromagnetic surveys (BHEM) and ground EM as primary tools to inform drill targeting. BHEM has provided excellent success at identifying off-hole anomalies that have resulted in discovery of sulphide drill intersections. The company is currently greatly anticipating drilling conductors recently found west of Lion and following up on recent success in Tiger and between Lion and Tiger.

Follow-up drilling on BHEM anomalies has resulted in sulphide drill intersections at Lion and Tiger, with no false positives encountered to date. The BHEM work will allow the company to fully integrate many other geophysical data sets, including ground EM, ground magnetics and gravity, and match this to surface geological mapping.

Currently, the company has completed surveys of all previously targeted drill holes, and now, with three drills turning on mineralized targets, results will progress quicker. BHEM will continue, but will be seamlessly integrated with the completion of each drill hole to limit drilling delay.

Power Metallic is continuing to explore Lion at depth with success. All drilling in 2025 (and assay-pending 2024 holes) have intersected the Lion zone, extending the plunge of Lion. The company is currently awaiting assays results from holes PN-24-086, PN-24-087, PN-24-092, PN-24-093, PN-24-096, PN-24-097 and PN-24-100. All these drill holes had significant visual mineralization.

In addition to following the down-plunge direction of Lion to expand the potential resource, Power Metallic has successfully completed BHEM on holes to the west of Lion, and these have indicated strong off-hole plates that will be followed up as soon as possible.

Following the initial intersection at Tiger in hole PN-24-094 (700 metres east of Lion), Power Metallic completed BHEM on this hole and identified multiple conductive off-hole plates. These plates were targeted resulting in sulphide intersections both west (PN-25-098) and east (PN-25-099) of PN-24-094. Assays are pending for all these holes, but visual logging and XRF (X-ray fluorescence) results indicate copper and nickel mineralization. Power Metallic then stepped out farther to the west from hole PN-25-098 to follow up on more BHEM targets and successfully hit sulphides in hole PN-25-101.

The limited drilling so far has not yet provided a confident model for the Tiger zone, and current interpretations assume that strike, dip and plunge will be similar to Lion and Nisk. As more drilling information accumulates Power Metallic will provide an interpreted model for Tiger. Drill holes PN-24-094, PN-24-098, PN-24-099 and PN-24-101 all have assays pending.

Following the success of Tiger’s BHEM surveying, Power Nickel revisited drill hole PN-24-088, which is located approximately halfway between the Lion and the Tiger zones. A semi-completed BHEM survey on the bottom half of PN-24-088 (top of hole collapsed) resulted in an off-hole anomaly, and by using a previous airborne EM anomaly, a vector to the BHEM was estimated. Drill hole PN-25-102 successfully intersected sulphide mineralization. This hole is significant as it provides evidence that mineralization is potentially connected all along the Lion to Tiger trend.

Power Metallic is currently drilling with one drill in the Nisk area. This program is designed to expand the mineral resource estimate (January 2024) at Nisk, especially to establish its potential to be a much larger nickel/copper/cobalt/platinum group element deposit, and to follow up on indications of possible Lion-style polymetallic mineralization on the fringes east and west of the Nisk Main deposit. Future work will expand westward from Nisk along the strike trend of the ultramafic host rock in areas previously shown to be mineralized in historical drill holes.

So far in 2025, Power Metallic completed one hole targeting an off-hole BHEM conductor. This hole intersected a narrow massive sulphide zone, but XRF analyses indicated very high nickel and cobalt tenor in the sulphides, significantly above previous metal values at Nisk. Although very narrow, this increase in metal tenor opens up the possibility of a new deposit hybrid in the Nisk camp. A second hole is currently drilling downplunge on the Nisk Main deposit to help establish the possibility of a larger resource at Nisk.

In June, the new core facility set-up will enable Power Metallic to have six rigs operating. Detailed planning is continuing, and, of course, any future planning will be modified or superseded to follow success. It is currently expected that four drills will work in the Lion-Tiger area, with multiple goals, including expanding Lion and Tiger, developing the Lion-Tiger in-between zones, following the BHEM Lion west targets, and finally infill drilling on Lion in preparation for a possible H1 (first half) 2026 mineral resource estimate.

To facilitate a Lion MRE, work is currently being done on the mineralogy of the deposit to determine the habit of the base metals (copper and nickel) and the deportment of the platinum group elements, gold and silver. This will help inform a future metallurgical study the company expects to deliver in the second half of 2025.

As the snow melts, other work will include detailed geological mapping and possible soil and till sampling to help identify subsidiary zones of potential mineralization. Finally, Power Metallic is revisiting its 2023 ambient noise tomography (ANT) survey. Recent technological advances in this geophysical method offer the opportunity to refine previous targeting in the Nisk area and encourage an expansion of the surveyed areas for both strike and dip targets integrated with 3-D magnetic and gravity modelling.

“To date, Power Metallic’s technical team has gone from one success to another. These successes have allowed Power Metallic to complete its recent financial raise. This money provides the technical team with the funding to follow up and expand on our previous successes. As any project matures it would normally be expected that discoveries will become more difficult to find, but the highly motivated exploration team believe that our current methods and planning will result in more discoveries throughout the 2025/2026 exploration campaigns,” stated Joe Campbell, vice-president, explorations.

On February 1, 2021, Power Metallic (then called Chilean Metals) completed the acquisition of its option to acquire up to 80% of the Nisk project from Critical Elements Lithium Corp. [TSXV: CRE; OTCQX: CRECF; FSE: F12].

The Nisk property comprises a large land position (20 km of strike length) with numerous high-grade intercepts. Power Metallic is focused on expanding the high-grade nickel, copper, platinum group metal, gold and silver mineralization with a series of drill programs designed to evaluate the initial Nisk discovery zone and the Lion discovery zone and to explore the land package for adjacent potential polymetallic deposits.