Huckleberry hits new copper zone

Vancouver — Drilling at Imperial Metals‘ (III-T) 50%-owned Huckleberry mine, 123 km southwest of Houston, B.C., has identified a new copper-molybdenum zone just north of the main pit at the mine site.

Highlights are as follows:

— hole 306 — 210.5 metres (from a depth of 90 metres) grading 0.5% copper and 0.04% molybdenum;

— hole 308 — 165 metres (from surface) averaging 0.35% copper and 0.043% moly;

— hole 314 — 265 metres (from 5 metres) grading 0.54% copper and 0.006% moly.

The Huckleberry open-pit mine started up in 1997 and currently produces 34,000 tonnes copper (75 million lbs.) and 200-500 tonnes molybdenum (320,000-1.1 million lbs.) annually. Reserves stand at 25 million tonnes grading 0.51% copper and 0.014% moly, which are sufficient for about 3.5 years.

The drilling is designed to extend the life of the operation through the delineation of a new, open-pit deposit in the vicinity of the existing mine.

The remaining half of Huckleberry is held by a Japanese consortium consisting of Mitsubishi Materials (MIMTF-Q), Marubeni (MARUY-Q), Dowa Mining (DWMNF-Q) and Furukawa (FUWAF-Q).