Midnight Sun provides update on Zambia exploration program – ICYMI

Midnight Sun Mining Corp (TSX-V:MMA, OTCQB:MDNGF) Vice President of Business Development Adrian O'Brien talked with Proactive about the company’s major exploration activities in Zambia.

Proactive: All right, welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. And joining me now is Adrian O'Brien. He is the vice president of business development for Midnight Sun Mining Corp.. And Adrian, good to see you again. How are you?

Adrian O'Brien: You too. Doing great. Busy times over here.

Yeah. You've got a lot of updates from a number of your projects. We'll talk about that in a second. But for those not familiar, maybe just remind everyone with a little synopsis of the company.

Absolutely. Midnight Sun is working on a very, very large project in an area called the Domes Region of Zambia, which is arguably the top spot in the world today for copper exploration. Every major copper producer is in that country, and the five biggest copper mines in Africa surround us. We're working on three big sulfide targets. When I say big, we’re looking for deposits that are a billion tonnes in nature. These are some of the largest deposits in the world, and Zambia is one of the few places where billion-tonne deposits are common. We have three targets of this type and a unique optionality: a cooperative exploration plan with First Quantum, a non-binding arrangement where we're working together to define oxide copper resources that could potentially feed their oxide circuit at the Kansanshi Mine next door. If successful, it could mean significant near-term cash flow.

Okay. In the news release, you talk about a number of things the company is doing. Let's start with Dumbwa because that target is significant. There's a lot of work going on there.

Dumbwa is a tier one exploration target. It checks all the boxes you'd want in this region to indicate a very big copper system. We have a 20-kilometre-long soil anomaly at 0.73% copper at surface — for comparison, 0.56% is the average grade of the surrounding mines. This anomaly is the largest and highest grade on record in Zambia, to our knowledge. We’re advancing that target. A key addition to our team is Kevin Bonel, who drove development at the Lumwana mine next door, now a flagship Barrick asset. He’s now leading our geological development. We started with a geochem anomaly, which we have. Then we began a dipole-dipole IP survey — a geophysical method to understand subsurface structures before drilling. That survey is 30% complete. Once results are in, we’ll use them to plan a 10,000-metre, CAD 3.5 million drill program. That’s launching in the next month or two.

Speaking of drilling, you’re about to start at Kazhiba. Talk to us about that.

Yes, Kazhiba is ready. It has two fronts. Under the First Quantum plan, we’re working on oxide blankets. Previous drill results include 21 metres at 10.5% copper and 26 metres at 5.5% — very high-grade. Beyond that, there’s a sulfide target. We believe it's the source of the oxide. It’s a 4x2 kilometre target in the right geology — the Lower Roan — which hosts 85% of copper deposits in the belt. We confirmed it with VTEM, geochem, partial leach, and finally a dipole-dipole IP survey. That shows it's a stratigraphic sulfide unit — a sulfide deposit at depth. Drilling starts this coming Monday or Tuesday, projected for the 26th. This is transformative for us.

And a quick update on the Mitu Trend?

Mitu surrounds the Solwezi Dome, which is the central point of our project — 506 square kilometres. Dumbwa is within the dome, but most deposits sit around the edge. At Mitu, we’re looking at the western flank. We've already intercepted sulfides in two areas — 11.5 metres at 3.5% and 11.5 metres at 1.5%. But this is the first systematic exploration. We’re doing a 1,800-sample partial ionic leach survey now, which will be followed by geophysics and then drilling later this year.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style