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Penny Taylor
Olympio Metals has tightened its grip on the high-grade Bousquet gold project in Quebec, earning a 51 per cent stake after meeting the earn-in milestone conditions for the highly prospective Canadian asset.
The company can now increase its stake to 80 per cent through a further C$500,000 in option payments, C$250,000 in shares and C$1M in exploration spending over five years. Olympio also retains the flexibility to accelerate those commitments if drilling and exploration momentum builds at the project.
Bousquet sits on Quebec’s famed Cadillac-Lake Larder Fault Zone, known as the Cadillac Break, one of the world’s richest gold-bearing structures with more than 110 million ounces of historical production. The project lies 15km west of the giant eight-million-ounce La Ronde and the 4.5-million-ounce Westwood gold operations. It is also 30km east of the Rouyn-Noranda mining centre.
Bousquet already shapes as a substantial mineralised system. Olympio’s phase one and phase two programs were centred on the Paquin prospect within the Bousquet project, where structural analysis linked Paquin and the nearby Amadee prospect into a 1.3km east-west mineralised corridor that remains open in multiple directions.
‘The upcoming televiewer survey will help to confirm the structural links between holes.’
Olympio Metals managing director Sean Delaney
The wider Bousquet South system spans roughly 3km by 1.5km and includes the Decoeur and CB-1 prospects, where drilling has intersected extensive gold mineralisation.
Work at Paquin has delivered a string of standout gold hits, highlighted by a bonanza intercept of 19.4 metres at 17.29 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 172.5m. That result included 7.5m at a hefty 41.81g/t gold and an exceptional 2m interval at 109.51g/t gold.
Other notable Paquin intercepts included 7.9m at 6.20g/t gold from 138m and 6.4m at 6.54g/t gold from 183m. Historical drilling at Paquin East also delivered equally impressive hits, including 9m grading 16.96g/t gold, featuring a spectacular 1-metre slice at 129.25g/t gold.
Elsewhere across Bousquet South, Decoeur returned 14.5m at 1.96g/t gold from 355.5m, while the CB-1 prospect produced 1.3m at 12.20g/t gold from 218.2m.
Management believes the Paquin prospect hosts multiple parallel high-grade lodes rather than a single mineralised zone. Historical drilling also indicates the broader gold system extends to at least 430m vertical depth.
Olympio Metals managing director Sean Delaney said: “Our plan is to test the lateral extension of the 19.4m at 17.29 g/t intercept in hole BO-26-64 with the next drilling program in late May and then test the down plunge extension of the main lode.”
Current drilling remains at an exploratory stage, with the company still working to define the scale, geometry and continuity of multiple high-grade lodes across the wider Bousquet system.
The next phase of field work is scheduled to begin in late May and will initially focus on a downhole televiewer survey before follow-up drilling gets underway at Paquin.
The televiewer work is expected to sharpen the structural model by mapping vein orientations and linking mineralised zones between drill holes, giving management a clearer view of the highest-grade lodes ahead of the next drilling campaign.
Follow-up drilling is expected to test both lateral extensions to the bonanza intercepts and deeper down-plunge positions within the Paquin “Main Lode” system.
The project is already well serviced by major infrastructure, with a highway, railway and hydroelectric power running directly through the project area, giving Bousquet clear long-term development advantages should exploration continue to expand the mineralised system.
Olympio finished the March quarter with $1.92M in cash and has since secured approval for a further $1.3M tranche from a recent placement, strengthening its funding position ahead of the next exploration phase at Bousquet.
At the corporate level, the company has completed the divestment of its Dufay gold project to Fokus Mining. A subsequent all-cash takeover of Fokus boosted the final sale consideration from the original C$500,000 (A$550,000) mix of cash and shares to C$684,000 (A$750,000) cash.
The sale has streamlined the company’s portfolio and freed up additional capital to focus on Bousquet, alongside its newly acquired Raven silver project in Montana and Sawtooth critical minerals project in Idaho.
Raven sits on proven old-timer mining ground with past production grades averaging 2084 g/t silver and 19.51 per cent copper, despite seeing little modern exploration. Sawtooth is an earlier-stage silver-antimony play hosting five mineral prospects in Idaho’s historic Sawtooth City mining district.
With fresh funding in the bank, multiple high-grade lodes emerging at Paquin and drills set to spin again within weeks, Bousquet is quickly emerging as the standout asset in Olympio’s expanding North American exploration portfolio.
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