Red Pine reports high-grade gold intercepts at Wawa project

Red Pine Exploration announced new assay results from 14 drill holes at its Wawa gold project in Ontario, Canada. The project was plagued by tampered assay results discovered last month.

The drill holes represent 4,105m of drilling, adding to a total of 67,000m of completed drilling since the company's resource expansion program began in 2021.

Highlights include 5.58gpt gold over 18.44m, with 6.18gpt gold over 1.11m and 72.20gpt gold over 0.88m, in SD-24-515 within the Jubilee Shear System.

"As part of this drilling, near-surface gold mineralisation in the Hanging Wall of the Jubilee Shear has continued to be intersected and is expected to contribute to reducing the stripping ratio under any proposed open pit scenario," interim chief executive Paul Martin said. "The recent intersection of significant gold mineralisation in the Jubilee Shear continues to confirm the continuity of the mineralisation that remains open down dip and down plunge."

Red Pine had to withdraw precious assay results after discrepancies were discovered in the results at the end of April. The explorer alleged that the inconsistencies resulted from manipulation by former chief executive Quentin Yarie, who left the explorer before the fraud discovery on April 19.

Red Pine said that Yarie manipulated 532 of over 98,000 drill core assay results since 2014. Most of the falsified results were within the Jubilee and Minto Shear, with an estimated resource loss of around 10-15%.

"With the detailed review, and correction, of our drill database completed and the addition of significant gold assays from our drill program, we look forward to reporting our updated NI 43-101 resource in Q3," Martin said. "The company anticipates a mid-June cut-off for the drilling assay database for the resource update."

In an investor call in mid-May, the explorer said it has decided to temporarily shut down its drilling program and trim costs at the site to preserve cash.

However, the company still believes in its asset, Red Pine's incoming chief executive Michael Michaud said during the call, which was his first address in his role at the company.

Michaud is set to start as the new chief executive on July 19. 

"We still believe in the potential of the asset," Michaud said. "It's in a great location in Ontario, it has good grades, it has a lot of room to grow in size."

Red Pine Exploration's shares are trading around C$0.095, having taken a hit after the assay tampering was announced. It has a market cap of C$18.13 million.