Benz Mining Corp. provided an update on its ongoing critical minerals exploration activities in the Upper Eastmain Greenstone Belt, located in the James Bay area of Quebec. Benz recently completed a helicopter supported reconnaissance and prospection campaign at the Ruby Hill West property which resulted in the sampling of multiple pegmatite occurrences in 12 new locations along the 45km of strike of greenstone belt under tenure at the Project.

The Ruby Hill West (RHW) Claims now cover 40km strike of the Upper Eastmain Greenstone Belt. Archean greenstone belts such as the Upper Eastmain Belt are renowned for their mineral endowment in multiple commodities, including gold, copper, nickel, zinc, lead, platinum group elements (PGE) and, more recently, lithium. In April 2022, Benz drilled the Ruby Hill West pegmatite occurrence and intercepted: 31.1m at 0.9% Li2O, 323ppm Ta2O5, 1093ppm Cs, 1558ppm Rb2O from 2.6m including: 26.4m at 1.01% Li2O, 355ppm Ta2O5, 980ppm Cs, 1601ppm Rb2O from 7.35m, 12.7m at 1.29% Li2O, 423ppm Ta2O5, 600ppm Cs, 1156ppm Rb2O from 21m and 3.7m at 2.61% Li2O, 579ppm Ta2O5, 441ppm Cs, 1057ppm Rb2O from 30m.

This lithium outcrop is not an isolated occurrence within the Upper Eastmain Greenstone Belt. In June and July 2022, Benz's technical team conducted a prospecting campaign aimed at checking and sampling pegmatite outcrops to determine whether their chemical composition is compatible with lithium caesium tantalum (LCT) systems, which are now the main source of lithium for the growing lithium battery manufacturing industry. Data from SIGEOM, Quebec's Ministry for Energy and Mineral Resources online database, showed that over 145 outcrops or boulders within Benz' RHW tenements had been described as pegmatite or pegmatitic granite.

Benz has now visited over 50 of those recorded occurrences and collected 45 samples for analysis. As previously announced on 1 August 2022, Benz identified pegmatite core drilled by a previous explorer and stored in the Eastmain Camp core library. The total length of the pegmatite logged in the core was approximately 80m and had only been partially analysed for gold.

This core has been entirely cut and sampled and submitted for multielement assays in the first week of October. Results will help guide potential drilling in the area in the 2023 drilling program. Benz is encouraged by the thickness of the pegmatite intersected in RHW 08-003 and also notes it is located approximately 4.5km away from its existing Ruby Hill West lithium discovery.

The Benz team has integrated historical outcrop descriptions with its own geological interpretation and recently acquired field data. Following that integration process, the Company decided to acquire an additional 129 claims to expand the boundaries of the existing tenement package past newly identified prospective areas. Benz staked the claims on open, category III land.

Claims were registered by MENR (Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources). The greenstone/granite boundary in the western limb of the Upper Eastmain Greenstone Belt where Ruby Hill West and Windy Mountain are located is not as well defined as interpretations suggest. Worldwide, hard rock lithium pegmatites in greenstone belts have been located near the interface between greenstone and granites with the best mineralisation occurring within the greenstone sequence, more brittle at the time of emplacement of the late pegmatitic intrusives.

The current geophysical data, despite its high quality does not always allow for a clear interpretation of the location of the granite greenstone contact. The new 129 claims add 68km2 of tenure to the property, making sure that the contact zone is fully enclosed within Benz's tenure. The additional ground adds 20km of strike of granite/greenstone contact, adding to the existing 70km of contact strike to total 90km, making RHW a potential new lithium district in the James Bay area.