VANCOUVER – Stratabound Minerals Corp. [SB-TSXV, SBMIF, OTC-Pink] shares soared in active trading Thursday after the company released an updated resource estimate for its 100%-owned Fremont Gold project in California.
In early trading, the shares jumped 75% or $0.03 to $0.07 on volume of 1.23 million. The shares currently trade in a 52-week range of 13.5 cents and $0.04.
The Fremont Gold project is located in the Mother Lode Gold Belt in California, 280 miles east of San Francisco. Stratabound acquired the project in April 2021, in a deal that immediately added a NI-43-101 compliant indicated and inferred resource of 879,000 ounces of gold to Stratabound’s asset base.
Stratabound said Fremont provides a tremendous opportunity to expand well beyond its current gold resources, is complimentary to the company’s existing early-stage assets and is a powerful catalyst for growth.
On Thursday, the shares rallied after Stratabound released a new mineral resource estimate (MRE), saying that indicated resources at the site have jumped 121% to 1.16 million ounces (19 million tonnes at 1.90 g/t), while the inferred resource is up 348% to 2.02 million ounces (29.3 million tonnes at 2.22 g/t).
The latest update includes a pit constrained resource of 1.15 million ounces in the indicated category and 1.49 million ounces of inferred material. It also includes an underground component of 9,000 ounces (indicated) and 536,000 ounces (inferred).
The updated estimate replaces an earlier estimate dated September 30, 2021. It now extends along 1,400 metres of combined strike length and up to 600 metres below surface as it additionally includes the satellite Queen Specimen open pit plus the Pine Tree/Josephine underground components, the company said in a press release.
The new estimate is based on 33,982 metres of drilling, 518 metres of trench sampling and 5,760 metres of underground channel sampling.
The Fremont Project is located at the southern end of the Mother Lode Gold Belt in California and consists of a 3,353-acre land package. Underground mining was carried out intermittently on the property from the 1850s to 1944.
The property hosts several gold-mineralized occurrences, including the historical Pine-Tree Josephine mine, which was active until 1944, producing approximately 490,254 tonnes of ore containing 126,000 ounces of gold. Gold mineralization is structurally controlled and hosted in altered quartz veins, vein networks, and wall rock adjacent to and along major regional scale faults.
“This updated Freemont MRE provides a solid foundation from which the company can advance towards completing a preliminary economic assessment and developing this gold project towards a production decision,’’ said Stratabound President and CEO Kim Tyler.
He said the latest estimate includes the Queen Specimen and underground component of the Pine Tree/Josephine deposit. However, this only evaluates 1.4 kilometres of the entire 4.0-kilometre strike length of a property that features for gold-mineralized zones.
