New Pacific Metals Corp. announced that a 6,000-metre ("m"), one rig drilling program has commenced at the Silverstrike Project. The program will initially focus on testing a broad gold zone identified by the company and by historical drilling.

The Silverstrike Project with an area of approximately 13km² is located approximately 140 kilometres ("km") southwest of La Paz, Bolivia, or approximately 450 km northwest of New Pacific's Silver Sand Project. The Company has 98% interest in the Silverstrike Project with its Bolivian partner and will cover 100% of the future expenditures of exploration, mining, development and production activities. The Gold Zone at the Silverstrike Central: Gold-rich mineralization at Cerro Tatitu Kkollu occurs adjacent to the contact zones between the ignimbrites and the rhyolite dyke swarm.

A total of 277 channel chip samples were collected over three key outcropping areas, the best results were 4.7 m grading 14.76 g/t Au and 27 g/t Ag from a historical mining adit; 42m at 1.02g/t Au and18g/t Ag, and 10m at 1.45g/t and14g/t Ag. A single dump grab sample collected from a historic exploration adit returned 1.66g/t Au, 154g/t Ag, and 7.97% Cu. Three holes Drilled by Rio Tinto in 1995 on the gold zone returning broad intervals of Au mineralization from surface: Hole BER-02 – 302m grading 0.27 g/t Au, including 42m grading 0.52g/t Au; Hole BRC-04 – 110m grading 0.46 g/t Au, including 22m grading 1.42 g/t Au; Hole BRC-12 – 258m grading 0.19 g/t Au.

Based on the company's field mapping, chipping sample and limited historical drilling results, the Company interprets the gold zone as very similar to the gold discovery in the Carangas Project that the silver rich zone sits at the top of the system stacking on top of the gold mineralization in volcaniclastic sediments that intruded by rhyolitic porphyry dyke swarms.