NGEx Minerals Ltd. reported the discovery of a third zone of high-grade copper-gold mineralization at the Los Helados project, Chile. This new zone, called the Alicanto Zone, is located 550m north of the Condor Zone and is related to a new porphyry center. The Alicanto Zone was discovered by hole LHDH078, which was targeting a geophysical anomaly north of hole LHDH062 (256m at 0.56% CuEq).

Hole LHDH078 was a vertical hole collared 275m northwest of LHDH062 which is the closest hole to it. Hole LHDH062 is one of NGEx's longest intersections, with 1,345m at 0.39% CuEq (0.32% Cu, 0.10 g/t Au, 1.1 g/t Ag) including a 256m section at 0.56% CuEq (0.46% Cu, 0.16 g/t Au, 1.9 g/t Ag). This was previously NGEx's most northerly hole into the deposit, and convinced NGEx that NGEx had not yet reached the edge of the deposit.

As NGEx worked through a reinterpretation of the deposit geology late last year, NGEx realized that LHDH062 had likely intersected a separate porphyry center, and that there was potential to expand this to the northwest. The high-grade Alicanto Zone intersected in hole LHDH078 is comprised of a hydrothermal breccia developed in Permo-Triassic rhyolite country rock. The breccia matrix is composed of very distinct purple anhydrite containing large clots of coarse chalcopyrite, and is visually very similar to the Fenix Zone located some 900m to the southwest.

Breccia fragments are cut by both A-type veins and quartz-molybdenite B-type veins. The Alicanto Zone occurs within the northernmost of three parallel mineralized structural corridors which trend west-northwest and are comprised of phreatic and hydrothermal breccias associated with different copper-gold porphyry intrusion phases. These corridors host, from south to north, the Fenix, Condor and now Alicanto Zones, each of which is open to expansion at depth and along the strike of the corridors.

2022 LOS HELADOS DRILL PROGRAM OVERVIEW: The 2022 drilling program was initially focused on defining zones of high-grade mineralization within the footprint of the overall Los Helados deposit and expanding the deposit's high-grade core. Reinterpretation of the deposit geology suggested that the deposit contained at least two distinct high-grade zones hosted within well-defined structural corridors. Suspicion of a third corridor has now been confirmed with hole LHDH078.