Western Metallica Returns Average Values of 2.9% CU and Confirms Historical Results From Turmalina Copper-Molybdenum Project in Peru

TORONTO, May 15, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Metallica Resources Corp. (TSXV: WMS) (“Western Metallica” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce initial results from its ongoing sampling program at the Company’s 2,747-hectare, Turmalina Project, a high-grade copper-molybdenum past producing mine hosted in tourmaline breccia pipes.

The recent rock chip sampling (refer to Figure 2) confirmed the historic results, as well as fit within the historical grade sections of the main breccia pipe in Figure 3, at both level 0 and level 5 that, are the only levels partially accessible currently (see Figure 3). The only sample collected from a face at level 0 returned Cu value of 0.1%, Mo >1%, with 1g/t Au and 37g/t Ag. More consistently 6 samples have been collected along level 5 that returned an average Cu value of 2.9% (MAX 5.9%) and average Mo values of 0.19% with one sample above 1% Mo.

Greg Duras, President and CEO of Western Metallica, commented: “It is encouraging to see such high grades in an underexplored Project in Peru, a country that hosts several world-class copper porphyry mines and projects. We believe Turmalina has an intact exploration potential that needs to be tested to define what could be a new high-grade copper-molybdenum resource."

The Turmalina Project is located in the Piura region of northern coastal Peru, approximately 170 kilometres by road from the Pan-American coastal highway to the west. The Project is located at an elevation of 2,600 metres in the western Cordillera of the Peruvian Andes near the coast and along a major road, lying within the same metallogenic belt as major projects such as Rio Blanco, Canariaco and La Granja.

The project is characterized by widespread, kilometre-scale, porphyry-style phyllic alteration, sulfidic veining, and several quartz tourmaline breccia pipes of which at least two are mineralized, suggesting the potential exists for a very large porphyry copper-molybdenum system at depth (refer to Figure 1).

One of the high-grade copper-molybdenum breccia pipes at Turmalina was the site of a historic producing mine with five production levels. The mine was active for ~25 years from the late 1960s until the mid 1990s, producing copper and molybdenum concentrates. Previously operated by Hochschild and then by Peruvian mining pioneer Guido del Castillo, the mine was shut down in the mid-1990s due to low commodity prices during that period.