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Significant assay results for grab samples collected from a historic mine working confirms potential for high grade copper and gold mineralization within the Argentinean Santa Ines Project Area. PepinNini plans to target this area with detailed surface mapping and ground geophysical surveys to identify priority drill targets.

The Santa Ines Project comprises one mina (mining licence) and one cateo (exploration licence) covering approximately 82 km². This project logistically benefits by being only 5kms from the Salta-Antofagasta railway and is easily accessed using existing roads and tracks.

The Project lays within a crustal scale NW trending mega-lineament, which in Andean geology are widely recognised as being major long-lived structural corridors that are fundamental in the control of the distribution of porphyry-epithermal deposits. The “Archibarca” NW lineament extends from Cerro Galán (Argentina’s largest ignimbrite caldera complex) in the southeast through to the Pacific coast of Chile.

Known mineralization along this lineament to the immediate southeast of Santa Ines includes Mansfield’s Lindero Gold Porphyry project (2.2 Moz. Au) that is currently in feasibility and advanced Cu-Au exploration projects including Rio Grande, Arizario and Samenta. Situated approximately 80km to the northwest along the same lineament is BHP’s giant Escondida Cu-Au porphyry (~5 billion tonnes at 1% Cu and 0.25 g/t Au) which also was deposited contemporaneously with the Santa Ines Formation event during the Late Eocene-Oligocene.

Santa Ines mina comprises a number of small artisanal diggings consisting of shallow pits and adits exploiting abundant secondary copper and specular haematite mineralisation associated with haematite-silica veining within a broader envelope of albitic alteration. Orientated to the NE this steeply dipping vein system and phyllic alteration extends across a low outcropping hill. More recent shallow pits indicate that mineralisation is evident for at least 400m across strike whereas along strike it becomes lost under thin cover at the base of a hill after a few hundred metres. Published reports by SEGEMAR (Argentine Geological Survey) describe the mineralisation at Santa Ines as being gold bearing with mineralisation present dominantly as malachite, azurite, chrysocolla and specular haematite with minor primary mineralisation occurring as chalcopyrite and chalcocite. Samples collected recently by PepinNini Minerals confirm high grade copper and gold mineralization is present.

Four grab samples were collected from around the opening of the Santa Ines Mine and assayed by ALS Global laboratory in Adelaide. Assay results are tabulated below:

	Sample	Cu%	Fe%	Au g/t	Ag g/t
1	21.7	26.4	0.91	34.9
2	13.7	23.7	0.17	17.5
3	10.6	10.8	0.12	1.6
4	1.7	8.0	–	3.4