Renforth’s wholly owned Parbec Gold Deposit is located on the Cadillac Break, one of Canada’s most productive gold structures, in Malartic, Quebec.
Our Parbec gold deposit is contiguous to the Canadian Malartic mine property, directly on strike with the deposit along the Cadillac Break. It hosts the same rock units and mineralization types as Canadian Malartic, one of Canada’s most significant gold deposits.
Parbec hosts a MRE with an effective date of December 2019 consisting of 104,000 indicated oz. gold at 1.78 g/t and 177,000 inferred oz. gold at 1.77 g/t, however, this estimate is now historical due to positive results obtained in the more recent drilling of 15,000m, including the validation of an additional 13,000m of historical drill data which was excluded from the MRE.
The Parbec deposit covers ~800m of the 1.8km strike of the Cadillac Break on the property, and is 80% above a depth of ~300m, pursuant to the MRE. In fact, gold has been drilled along the entire strike of the property, outside of and deeper than the MRE deposit model.
At Parbec, in the same manner as it occurs at Canadian Malartic deposit, the mineralized zone overlaps the contact between the Piché Group and the Pontiac sediment. Gold can be hosted in quartz veining associated with disseminated pyrite hosted in magnetic diorite and varied types of porphyritic intrusions. At Parbec this environment is favorable to create pluri-metric lenses, helped by the structural complexity of the environment.
In addition, Renforth has recently re-interpreted the structural geology at Parbec. Renforth sees significant structural parallels between Parbec and the Cartier Zone on the adjacent Canadian Malartic project. In both cases, the major structural control appears to be a series of sinistral, NNW-striking shears which interacted with the units within and around the Cadillac Break to create conjugate shears and dilatory zones at Parbec. There is also a tight synformal fold within the Pontiac sediments close to the Piche contact, plunging SSE, and possibly related to the NNW-striking shears
The 2020-2021 drilling at Parbec has allowed the geometry of the mineralized zones to be better understood, and many of these appear to strike roughly east-west or to curve in that direction, following conjugate east-west structures related to the NNW-striking corridor. This has highlighted new exploration targets both within the Cadillac Break and away from it into the Pontiac sediments, which were not well tested by previous drilling in part because almost all drilling prior to 2020 was aligned perpendicular to the Break based on the model that all mineralized zones are parallel to the Break. This new interpretation significantly increases the prospective ground on the property. The recent soil survey was an initial attempt to delineate these mineralized structures in the Pontiac.
The historic adit at Parbec is a major asset. Dewatering the adit would allow for detailed underground mapping and sampling in some of the structurally crucial areas described above. Wells and settling ponds already exist on-site from the original development which could be re-used for the dewatering. The underground workings stop only a few metres from the Camp Zone, one of the best-mineralized zones on the Parbec project. Only a small amount of underground development would be required to allow for bulk sampling of this mineralized zone.
Current exploration at Parbec consists of a soil survey program investigating the sediments south of the Break for the first time. This is to discover any unknown areas of near surface mineralization, as consideration for a stripping location, in addition to the two known target areas. We will be stripping to access surface/near surface mineralization to, amongst other things, take larger sample size to study metallurgy and pre-concentration. Renforth is exploring the viability of a small-scale pit on the south side of the Break to generate internal cash flow to fund dewatering of the ramp and underground exploration at Parbec.
Other targets at Parbec remain almost entirely unexplored, most significantly the northern contact of the Cadillac Break and the Piche/Cadillac Group Contact, which is mineralized on nearby properties including Pan-Canadian/Chibex. In addition, the southeast extension of the main mineralized zones remains very poorly delineated. This area hosts some of the best DDH intercepts (e.g. PAR-18-78, 3.64g/t Au over 19.3m including 11.65g/t Au over 4.2m); this interval in particular may be an example of the east-west, conjugate shear control.
