June 22, 2021 – Toronto, Ontario: Royal Road Minerals Limited (TSXV:RYR) (“Royal Road” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce further interim drilling results from its Caribe gold discovery in northeastern Nicaragua.
The Caribe project forms a part of the Company's Strategic-Alliance agreement (see press release; September 6, 2017) with Hemco Mineros Nicaragua (“Hemco” a subsidiary of Colombia’s Grupo Mineros S.A. MINEROS:CB) and is located in the highly prospective “Golden Triangle” of northeastern Nicaragua. Royal Road Minerals is operator of the Strategic Alliance.
Royal Road’s exploration team discovered the Caribe project during reconnaissance exploration in February of 2018. Outcrop at Caribe is concealed under soil and laterite cover and there is no previous record of mining or mineralization in the area. In 2019, Royal Road and Hemco completed an initial 4-hole, exploratory drilling program at Caribe which returned promising results for gold (see Press Release October 7, 2019). A follow-up diamond drilling program commenced at the project during August of last year and has returned encouraging initial results including CB-DDH-016, 100.45 meters at 1.0 gram per tonne; CB-DDH-017, 90 meters at 1.0 gram per tonne and CB-DDH-015, 63 meters at 1.0 gram per tonne gold (see Press Releases November 10, 2020, February 11, 2021, March 17, 2021 and Table 1). Results for a further 3 exploratory drill holes have now been returned. Significant results include:
CB-DDH-021 29 meters at 1.0 gram per tonne gold
CB-DDH-022 12 meters at 1.2 grams per tonne gold (within a broader halo of 44 meters at 0.7 grams per tonne gold)
CB-DDH-023 10.1 meters at 1.85% Copper equivalent[1]
(not true width and the company does not have sufficient information to make a determination of the true widths of the drill hole intersections)
The complete lack of outcrop, often significant depth of soil and laterite cover and the brecciated nature of the volcanic sequence at Caribe means a constant reinterpretation of geological models as drilling advances and the project slowly reveals itself. This interpretative process is currently frustrated by congestion and slow turnaround times at our contract geochemical laboratory. In some cases turnaround times can exceed 40-days from sample delivery to the receipt of final results.
Information from recent deep-drilling, the relogging of previous drill holes and the reprocessing and reinterpretation of geophysical data has defined what appears to be a broadly structurally controlled system represented primarily by a regional-scale northwest-southeast trending fault zone and subsidiary (possibly tensional) northeast oriented zones (corridors, see Figure 1) that are apparent in the magnetic data. Limited core orientation information implies that the northeast corridors host steeply-dipping gold-mineralized hydrothermal breccia bodies with a sulfide-rich matrix composed of pyrite, chalcopyrite and molybdenite. Gold is also hosted in a broader, probably northeast dipping, stratabound (lower temperature) halo around these breccia bodies, see Figure 1.
Multi-element analyses of drillhole geochemical data and the copper mineralization intersected in drill hole CB-DDH-023 are interpreted to imply a concealed copper and molybdenum (possibly porphyry style) mineralized system located outside the limits of the lower temperature gold mineralized halo.
See Table 1 for copper equivalent calculation.
Exploratory drilling is continuing at Caribe. The Company also intends to complete IP geophysics at the project and is currently awaiting delivery of a portable Rotary Air Blast/Reverse Circulation (RAB/RC) drilling rig with capacity to sample beneath the soil and laterite cover across a wide area.
“We are very excited by both the immediate near-surface gold potential and the possibility of a deeper porphyry-style system at Caribe and pleased that the project seems to be finally giving up its secrets” said Dr Tim Coughlin, Royal Roads President and CEO. “Laboratory turnaround times have been very frustrating and we are working with our contractors to ensure that this situation is rectified”.
In Colombia Royal Road Minerals operates through its wholly-owned Colombian companies Minerales Camino Real SAS founded in 2015 and Exploraciones Northern Colombia SAS acquired from previous owners in 2019. In Argentina Royal Road Minerals operates through its wholly owned Argentinian company, Minerales Camino Real Argentina. In Saudi Arabia and Morocco the Company operates through its 50% owned Saudi Arabian registered subsidiary, Royal Road Arabia.
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