Cristal in zinc

Vancouver – Rio Cristal Zinc (RCZ-V) broke the news of 8 drill results that cut rich zinc grades at its Cristal project, 740 km north of Lima Peru, boosting its recently lackluster share price from 30 to close at 40 Thursday.

“There’s one thing we’re looking for and that’s zinc,” Cristal director Thomas Findley says.

So far the company has focused its 22-hole drill program on the Cristal site, one of several promising targets in its 25,000 hectare Charlotte Bongara claim.

Findley says the company has targeted drilling near visible zinc oxide outcrops and finished assays from two areas – Esperanza and Yolanda targets roughly 150 metres apart.

At Esperanza drills hit 58.7 metres grading 10% zinc in hole 7 starting 9.7 metres down-hole, 14.5 metres grading 14.7% zinc in hole 13 between 12.9 and 27.4 metres, and 12.5 metres grading 26.1% zinc in hole 14 between 11.0 and 23.5 metres.

The grades at Yolanda weren’t as high as those cut at Esperanza, but they were still significant. Hole 5 returned 15.7 metres grading 9.3% zinc starting at 21.6 metres, hole 9 bit through 13.1 metres starting at 3 metres grading 6% zinc, and hole 12 intersected 7.4 metres grading 6.3% zinc starting at 1.7 metres below the surface. The mineralized areas are open at depth and in all directions.

In addition to further step-out drilling at its Cristal project, this summer the company will continue to explore zinc prospects within the Charlotte Bongara claim block, most notably at its San Jose and Florida targets respectively about 10 and 20 km to the southwest of the Cristal site.

“We’ll run through to August when it starts to get wet,” Findley says. Although the area is not as difficult to explore as the deep Amazonian jungle, he says, the region is nonetheless heavily wooded and gets extremely muddy during the rainy season.

As for access, the company is fortunate to have good neighbours. Findley says Cristal has the right to use a nearby road, and if the zinc deposit proved economic, “You’d only have to cut another 3 to 4 km of road to get to the Cristal site.”

Findley also calls the region an emerging zinc district with Cementos Pacasmayo’s active zinc mine to the east and Votorantim’s Florida Canyon exploration project to the south, both adjacent to Cristal’s claim block.

He says that part of the attraction to the region is the ease of removing ores. “They use front end loaders at Mina Grande (a mine owned by Pacasmayo),” he says, and then ship zinc ore to a kiln for processing.

At present they have only drilled through shallower zinc oxides to a depth of about 70 metres, but he believes zinc sulphides may begin at 700 metres, a hypothesis Cristal will put to the test in a planned deep drilling program.