Geology

Batong Buhay sits within the Cordillera region of Northern Luzon, a prolific copper gold belt, which also hosts the Company’s Abra exploration tenement. The Project was first discovered in 1934 and initially developed as an underground gold mine, with renewed interest in its porphyry copper-gold potential from 1969 onwards.

At least two porphyry copper-gold orebodies have been identified within the licence area – Dickson and Maalinao North – both mainly hosted by sericite-clay-chlorite altered quartz diorite to tonalite porphyry.

• Dickson: has a high-grade core, 220m in diameter, with average assays of 1.43% Cu and 1.33 g/t Au (2.67% CuEq)*, enveloped by an outer shell averaging 0.5% Cu. Historical (non-JORC compliant) resource of 86.9 million tonnes at 0.60% Cu and 0.25 g/t Au (0.83% CuEq)*.
• Maalinao North: located approximately 500m south-east of Dickson, roughly tabular in shape, with approximate dimensions of 800m by 250m, and open at depth. Tested by only 4 historical drillholes to date.
• Level 5: a high sulphidation quartz-enargite gold vein system identified north-east of Dickson. Veins trend north-south to north-northwest, range from 1 to 9m in width, and are vuggy and chalcedonic, containing chalcopyrite, enargite, covellite and tennantite, hosted within advanced argillic altered tonalite porphyry and basalt.

The inter-deposit zone between Dickson and Maalinao North has never been drill tested. Metals Exploration will assess whether the two centres represent a single, coalescing mineralised system, with the potential to significantly increase the overall resource envelope.

Historical drilling showed continuous mineralisation from surface, and all 21 historical holes ended in mineralisation — see the Exploration tab for the full historical drillhole dataset.