Focus Ventures to start drilling at Nueva California

2010-01-07 05:49 PT - News Release

Mr. David Cass reports

FOCUS RECEIVES DRILL PERMIT FOR NUEVA CALIFORNIA PROJECT, DRILLING TO COMMENCE SHORTLY

Focus Ventures Ltd. has provided an update on progress at its Nueva California property located about 35 kilometres north of Barrick Gold's Pierina mine, near the town of Huaraz, Peru.

Drilling to commence in January

Management is pleased to announce that permissions for drilling have been received on schedule. Focus will begin a planned 4,000m diamond drill program shortly.

The program will utilize 2 drill rigs to test for a bulk tonnage gold-silver deposit over the 800m x 400m extent of the mine area. Drilling will also test deep geophysical targets and more conceptual targets associated with a low angle regional fault believed to underpin the known mineralization at depths of 250m - 350m.

Encouraging results were received from a 400m, first-pass drill campaign by Focus which confirmed the presence of wide, potentially economic gold mineralization starting from surface (see press release October 26, 2009). Highlights of this drilling included:

- 69.6m grading 1.84 g/t Au* and 22 g/t Ag from surface in Hole DDH-NC-003

- 38.2m grading 1.7 g/t Au and 20 g/t Ag from surface in Hole DDH-NC-002

* Interval 2.70m - 3.6m assaying 171 g/t Au was capped at 30 g/t Au for the purposes of this calculation

Focus is the first company to drill test Nueva California where gold mineralization is associated with intensely altered granodiorite, sheared argillites and brecciated contact zones.

Exploration Results from Adit 870

In December 2009 the Company's geologists attempted to open and rehabilitate Adit 870, the lower-most underground gallery at Nueva California in order to access and verify historic sampling by the mine along the main cross-cut which averaged 224m grading 3g/t Au (The reader is cautioned that this is historic data. It is not compliant with NI 43-101 and cannot be relied upon. Focus has not yet completed sufficient work to verify this result). The sampling program was started but had to be abandoned due to severe blockages within the adit, dangerous ground conditions caused repeated collapse of the adit roof in several areas particularly within the reported higher grade zones.

Some sampling was possible within the main cross-cut and along an adjacent production drift which exploited a brecciated contact between argillite and granodiorite. Sampling within the production drift returned assay results that were within the range of the results obtained by previous samples. However, sampling within the main cross cut where it was accessible returned much lower grades than the historic sampling. The reason for the general disparity in the historic grades reported by the mine in the cross-cut with those sampled by Focus is currently poorly understood, as sampling in other drifts at higher elevations has supported the historic data. A plan map showing comparative sample locations and grades can be viewed on the Focus website www.focusventuresltd.com.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical information in this release was prepared under the supervision of Mr. David Cass, Focus's President, who is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia, and a "Qualified Person" in accordance with NI 43-101.