Champion drills 29.2 m of 24% Fe at Fire Lake

2009-05-27 16:14 ET - News Release

Mr. Thomas Larsen reports

CHAMPION MINERALS INTERSECTS UP TO 28.7% IRON ON THE FIRE LAKE NORTH CLAIM BLOCK, FERMONT IRON PROPERTY, NORTHEASTERN QUEBEC

Champion Minerals Inc. is providing assay results from the winter drill program on the company's Fire Lake north claim block of the Fermont iron property located 250 kilometres north of the St. Lawrence River port town of Port-Cartier in the Fermont iron ore district (FIOD) of northeastern Quebec. Champion is currently in the first year of a five-year option agreement to initially earn a 65-per-cent interest in the property from Fancamp Exploration Ltd. and the Sheridan Platinum Group Ltd.

The Fire Lake north claim block is located 42 km southwest of the town of Fermont, Que., and is centred six km east of Highway 389 linking the port community of Baie-Comeau to Fermont. The project area is underlain by two-kilometre outcrop ridges of coarse grained quartz-specularite-magnetite iron formations, similar to those which host the iron deposits of the FIOD, such as the Bloom Lake deposit that hosts 827 million tonnes grading 29.3 per cent iron.

The seven-hole, 1,526-metre diamond drilling program was completed in two areas on the Fire Lake north claim block at Don Lake and Half Mile Lake. Abitibi Geophysics Inc. of Val d'Or, Que., interpreted the airborne geophysical data and provided the company plan maps and magnetic 2-D inversion profiles to aid the drill target selection in the iron formations. Drill holes were collared at approximately 400 metres spacing along the strike-length of the iron formation-magnetic anomaly and 154 core samples were taken for iron analysis. The southwest portion of the Fire Lake north claim block contains a historical resources of 25 million tonnes grading 32 per cent iron along the 6.5-kilometre-long north-trending Fire Lake magnetic anomaly located two kilometres west of the Half Mile Lake anomaly; however this area could not be included for drilling in this campaign due to difficult access conditions, but is still being considered for drilling in the near term. This remains an excellent target because it is adjacent and to the north of the Fire Lake mine (341 million tonnes at 33.4 per cent iron) that is a seasonal producer in the area. Significant iron assay intervals are summarized in the following table.

                        IRON ASSAY INTERVALS
                                               Core           Iron
DDH #                  From       To       length(1)       assay(2)
                         (m)      (m)            (m)         (% Fe)

                       77.1    106.3           29.2           24.0
DL09-01        
                      202.6    223.1           20.5           14.0

DL09-02                32.4     54.0           21.6           15.1

DL09-02B               55.3    105.4           50.1           15.5

including              57.3     65.0            7.7           20.7

including              74.4     95.4           21.0           18.0

DL09-03                69.2     87.0           17.8           20.2

                       65.3     89.5           24.2           23.4
DL09-04               -----    -----           ----           ----
                      203.8    225.0           21.2           23.6

FL09-01                84.5     90.8            6.3           28.7

                      106.9    122.6           15.7           18.2

including             106.9    116.8            9.9           22.9

                      105.4    140.2           34.8           11.9
FL09-02            
                      105.4    116.4           11.0           21.6


(1) Approximate true widths.
(2) All drill core logging and sample preparation was conducted by
    qualified company personnel under NI 43-101 standards at the
    company's core logging facilities in Labrador City, Nfld.
    The NQ-sized drill core was split in half. One-half of the drill
    core was kept in the core tray for reference purposes and the other
    half core was individually bagged, tagged, sealed and packed in
    large nylon bags which were then securely closed and sent by commercial
    ground transportation for analysis to the ALS Laboratory Group
    facilities in Val d'Or, Que. Certified reference
    standards were inserted every 40 samples as well as a blank sample was
    inserted every 41 samples for quality assurance and quality control.
    ALS-Chemex also inserted blank samples, standards and duplicates.

Key drilling highlights

In the Don Lake area five drill holes were completed totalling 1,135.6 m. The drill holes tested five parallel northwest-trending magnetic anomalies over a 2.1 km strike length. A moderately inclined and northeast dipping U-shaped synform was identified consisting of 25 m to 85 m wide north and south limbs of lean quartz-specularite-magnetite iron formation intersected in DL09-01/DL09-04 and DL09-02 and 2B/DL09-03, respectively, yielding assays in the range of 15 per cent to 24 per cent iron over an average core length or true width intervals of approximately 24 m.

In the Half Mile Lake area two holes were drilled for a total of 390 metres. Drilling tested the northern 400 m segment of the northwest-southeast striking 4.5 km long Half Mile Lake magnetic anomaly. Steeply northeast-dipping lean quartz-specularite-magnetite iron formations were intersected in the range of 12 per cent to 29 per cent iron over an average core length or true width intervals of approximately 15.5 m.

Thomas Larsen, president and chief executive officer of Champion stated: "Champion has achieved another milestone on the Fermont iron property by successfully completing the winter 2009 drill campaign and its objectives of not only validating the presence of a number of iron formations along the 15-kilometre Bellechasse-Fire Lake iron corridor, and also confirming their combined specularite(hematite)-magnetite composition, their strike lengths, depths and widths, and their iron grades from both the lean and rich portions of the iron formations. With these results in hand, Champion expects to complete a new mineral resource estimate for the Bellechasse-Midway claim block later in 2009."

Jeff Hussey, vice-president of exploration of Champion, added: "Further exploration and drilling will also be undertaken in 2009 on the Moire Lake east claim block which hosts a historical mineral resource of 101 million tonnes grading 30.8 per cent iron. The Harvey-Tuttle claim block will also be evaluated for drilling with its 50 km plus of untested and folded magnetic anomalies that are favourable for concentrating iron formations in a smaller area. The Silicates-Brutus claim block contains historical mineral resources of 304 million tonnes grading 29.4 per cent iron, and is being evaluated to develop the best targets for upcoming drilling campaigns. All three projects are considered to be accessible in the summer months. The strategy in the near term is to validate the historical work and potentially delineate or increase the historical mineral resources in to current NI-43-101 mineral resources."

Owing to the success of the magnetic volumetrics and tonnage potential estimates completed on Champion's Attikamagen iron property in the Schefferville mining camp located 245 km north of Fermont, a similar study Champion is being initiated on the property. The study would enable the company to better understand the geometry of the iron formations on all 15 claim blocks by outlining their lengths, widths, depths and dips, ultimately resulting in an estimate of their volumes and also their tonnage potential at different specific gravities, but not their grades. Champion is of the opinion this study can add value to the exploration targeting process for the property by producing higher quality drill targets to possibly convert the tonnage potential to an eventual mineral resource.