News 2022

Aton intersects 1.00 g/t gold over 129.5m at Rodruin, further confirming wide zones of surface mineralisation

Vancouver, British Columbia, March 7, 2022: Aton Resources Inc. (AAN: TSX-V) (“Aton” or the “Company”) is very pleased to update investors on the latest tranche of results from the Phase 2 diamond drilling programme at its advanced Rodruin gold exploration project. Rodruin is located in the Company’s 100% owned Abu Marawat Concession (“Abu Marawat” or the “Concession”), in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.

Highlights:

• Diamond drilling is ongoing at Rodruin, with 21 drill holes having been completed to date, ROD-048 and ROD-051 to ROD-070, for a total of 1,992 metres;
• Drill holes ROD-056 to ROD-061 were drilled to test the Central Buttress Zone, an outcropping body of gossanous and mineralised carbonate rock;
• Drill hole ROD-056 was mineralised over its entire length from collar to end of hole and returned a mineralised intersection of 129.50m grading 1.00 g/t Au and 8.8 g/t Ag;
• Other drill holes also returned wide mineralised intersections including 86.60m grading 0.76 g/t Au and 6.3 g/t Ag (hole ROD-057), 45.93m grading 0.93 g/t Au and 3.8 g/t Ag (hole ROD-059), and 85.40m grading 0.66 g/t Au and 10.2 g/t Ag (hole ROD-061);
• These results continue to confirm that a substantial block of predominantly gossanous carbonate hosted oxide gold mineralisation outcrops at surface at the Central Buttress Zone at Rodruin.

“We continue to be very pleased with the assay results from the Rodruin diamond drilling programme as they come in” said Tonno Vahk, Interim CEO. “These latest results again back up our long held interpretation of there being zones of bulk open pittable oxide mineralisation at Rodruin, starting from surface, and we are working hard to quantify these in a maiden MRE as soon as practically possible. We are also very excited by some of the strong copper-zinc sulphide mineralisation which we are currently drilling at depth, and this gives us the belief that there is also going to be a really quite substantial primary sulphide resource at Rodruin, which we are now starting to unlock.”

Rodruin diamond drilling programme

The Rodruin prospect was discovered in December 2017 by Aton geologists (see news release dated December 14, 2017), and is located approximately 18km east of the Company’s Hamama West mineral deposit (Figure 1). During 2018 Aton constructed a c. 4.5km access road to the prospect, and undertook a highly successful 50 hole Phase 1 reverse circulation percussion (“RC”) drilling programme at Rodruin, which returned mineralised intersections including 36m grading 12.47 g/t Au and 9.3 g/t Ag, from 5m downhole depth (hole ROP-003, see news release dated October 1, 2018) and 61m grading 1.55 g/t Au and 8.9 g/t Ag, from 111m (hole ROP-050, see news release dated January 29, 2019).

The Phase 2 diamond drilling programme at Rodruin commenced in late November 2021, and results reported to date include 48.00m grading 1.97 g/t Au and 5.3 g/t Ag, from 27.0m in hole ROD-052 (see news release dated January 25, 2022), and 88.25m grading 1.74 g/t Au and 9.7 g/t Ag, from 25.75m in hole ROD-055 (see news release dated March 1, 2022).

Discussion of results

Drill holes ROD-056 to ROD-061 were all drilled horizontally or at shallow angles at the Central Buttress Zone (“CBZ”) at Rodruin, and were designed to test near-surface gossanous carbonate associated mineralisation (Figure 2). Collar and survey details of the holes are provided in Table 1.

All holes, except ROD-060, intersected wide zones of gold(-silver) mineralisation on the CBZ, with hole ROD-056 returning a mineralised intersection of 129.50m grading 1.00 g/t Au and 8.8 g/t Ag, over its entire length from collar to end of hole (Figure 2). Details of intersections from holes ROD-056 to ROD-061 are provided in Table 2. This intersection confirms the results from channel sampling profile ROC-031, which returned a mineralised intersection of 127m grading 1.33 g/t Au and 7.3 g/t Ag from the same area (see news release dated November 3, 2021).

It is also noted that hole ROD-056 encountered a wide zone of voids and cavities between 107.5-118.5m, believed to be related to collapsed and back-filled ancient mine workings. For the purposes of intersection calculation such zones with poor core recovery were allocated zero grades, although the backfill within the ancient workings is typically well mineralised, as has been demonstrated by previous surface sampling at Rodruin. In total, 14.3m of voids and backfilled cavities from hole ROD-056 related to the ancient mine workings were allocated zero grade.

Other notable intersections from the holes being reported include 86.60m grading 0.76 g/t Au and 6.3 g/t Ag, from 12.65m (hole ROD-057), 45.93m grading 0.93 g/t Au and 3.8 g/t Ag, from 22.57m (hole ROD-059), and 85.40m grading 0.66 g/t Au and 10.2 g/t Ag, from 15.70m (hole ROD-061).

The results from this latest set of holes being reported again confirm the presence of wide zones of near-surface gold(-silver) mineralisation associated with gossanous carbonate rocks at Rodruin. It is anecdotally noted that grades appear to be increasing towards the southern and upper CBZ, higher up on and towards the top of the South Ridge. Previous RC drill intersections included 31m @ 2.45 g/t Au and 12.5 g/t Ag (hole ROP-034, see news release dated January 3, 2018) and 34m @ 2.00 g/t Au (hole ROP-033). These latest results again confirm the potential for a significant volume of oxide mineralisation at the Central Buttress Zone at Rodruin. This mineralisation outcrops over a wide area at surface and this near-surface mineralisation will be readily amenable to open pit mining methods with very low strip ratios.

The current diamond drilling programme has been designed with the objective of testing the potential near surface open pittable resources at the CBZ as well as the Aladdin’s Hill area (see news release dated March 1, 2022), and the GF Zone (Figure 2), which has not yet been drilled in this programme. The drilling is currently focussed on testing the deeper primary sulphide expressions of the near surface mineralisation, and strong primary copper-zinc sulphide mineralisation has now been identified in a second deep hole. The Company will continue to release new drill results as they become available.

Sample processing and analytical procedures

Drill core was logged by Aton geologists and marked up for cutting and sampling at the Rodruin core farm. Samples were typically selected over nominal 1m intervals, but as determined by the logged lithologies. The core was half-cut by Aton staff onsite at the recently constructed onsite Rodruin sample preparation laboratory.

Full half-core samples were collected and bagged up in cloth bags, weighed and crushed to -4mm onsite, and split to a nominal c. 250-500g sample size. The coarse crushed reject samples are retained onsite at the Rodruin sample prep lab.

The c. 250-500g dried, crushed and split samples were shipped to ALS Minerals sample preparation facility at Marsa Alam, Egypt where they were pulverised to a size fraction of better than 85% passing 75 microns. From this pulverised material a further sub-sample was split off with a nominal c. 50g size, which was shipped on to ALS Minerals at Rosia Montana, Romania for analysis.

Samples were analysed for gold by fire assay with an atomic absorption spectroscopy (“AAS”) finish (analytical code Au-AA23), and for silver, copper, lead and zinc using an aqua regia digest followed by an AAS finish (analytical code AA45). High grade gold samples (>10 g/t Au) were re-analysed using analytical code Au-GRA21 (also fire assay, but with a gravimetric finish). High grade Ag and base metal samples (Ag >100 g/t, and Cu, Pb and Zn >10,000ppm or >1%) were re-analysed using the ore grade technique AA46 (also an aqua regia digest followed by an AAS finish).