Strategic Metals Ltd. announced that drilling is about to commence at its wholly owned Mint porphyry copper-gold project, located in southwestern Yukon Territory. The two-hole, 1,000 metre program is designed to test the copper-rich Upper Canyon Zone identified in 2021. The Mint project is a 50 sq km property located 26 km south of the Alaska Highway.

It is one of the youngest porphyry systems in Canada and is hosted within Oligocene-age granodiorite and porphyry dykes with alteration and mineralization permeating into a nearly coeval, overlying basalt unit. Work programs conducted by the Company since 2010 have outlined promising geochemical and geophysical features that are centered on a zone of hydrothermal alteration, marked by a prominent gossan. Soil geochemistry has returned strong copper, gold and molybdenum values within an area about 2000 m in diameter.

A prominent magnetic high that underlies the southern part of the geochemically anomalous area is flanked to the north by a zone with elevated potassium radiometrics. In 2012, six relatively short, diamond drill holes tested in and around magnetic and chargeability highs. Most of these holes intersected strongly fractured, phyllic altered rocks that returned moderately to strongly enriched gold values but only weakly elevated copper and molybdenum values.

The best results were from the most northerly hole (M12-03), which averaged 0.204 g/t gold over its entire 331 m length, including a 53 m interval grading 0.556 g/t gold near the bottom of the hole. This hole lies just north of the magnetic high, in the southern part of the potassium radiometric anomaly. The 2023 drill holes will test beneath the mineralization exposed at the Upper Canyon Zone and extend deeper into what is believed to be the core of the system.

Given the young age of the porphyry mineralization and the shallow level of erosion, which is indicated by the presence of basaltic volcanic flows that are nearly coeval with the mineralizing intrusions, most of the porphyry system is expected to be blind to surface.