Metallurgical Test Program Begins At Flat Gold Project

VANCOUVER - Tectonic Metals Inc. reported the initiation of a baseline metallurgical testwork program on the Flat Gold Project an intrusion-hosted, bulk tonnage gold system located in southwestern Alaska. Metallurgical samples were selected by Tectonic from historically drilled diamond core samples with the objective of investigating the potential for free-milling gold mineralization at Flat, and more specifically, within the Chicken Mountain Zone (CMZ).

Tony Reda, President & CEO, said, "Metallurgical testing is one of the most critical steps a company can take in successfully transforming an exploration-stage project into a profitable mining opportunity. The Tectonic business model is predicated on managing risk from day one onward and kicking off our initial work at Flat with a baseline metallurgy testwork program definitely embodies that philosophy. At Flat, we are blessed with historical work, including soil sampling, trenching, and drilling, that suggests the presence of a large mineralizing gold system. With that box ticked and given our business model, it only makes sense that we de-risk Flat as quickly as possible with metallurgical testing to add value quickly and provide a tremendous amount of insight into the processing amenability of the Flat gold mineralization, which in return will shape how we target and explore Flat going forward."

The objective of this metallurgical testing program is to conduct baseline level investigations to determine the amenability of intrusion-hosted gold mineralization at Flat to conventional cyanide extraction, flotation recovery, and gravity separation processing options. The scope of this study consists of feed characterization of each individual sample prior to compositing, composite head sample characterization, and metallurgical test work on each composite comprising grind calibration, cyanide kinetic leaching, rougher flotation, gravity testing, and geochemical characterization of test work products.

While extensive placer gold production has been recorded from drainages sourced on Chicken Mountain, historical metallurgical testing on intrusion-hosted gold mineralization is limited to a single bottle roll test in 1991 conducted on diamond drill core from a monzonite dyke east of the main Chicken Mountain mineralized body. The bottle roll test work data on this sample indicates that intrusion-hosted gold mineralization at Flat is amenable to direct cyanidation and showed increasing extractions with decreasing particle size for the sample tested. The sample tested in 1991 yielded a cumulative gold extraction of 82% for the 200 mesh particle size and 54.0% for the 6 mesh material. Unfortunately, neither the type nor style of the mineralization nor the representativeness of the material submitted is reported and the application of this historical met sample to the mineralization at Chicken Mountain is somewhat limiting.