update update on the recently completed PhotonAssay duplicate analysis. The campaign was a success with a substantial increase in both the overall amount of gold-mineralized intervals and the number of high-grade (over eight grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au)) intervals reported.
Chief executive officer Xavier Braud commented:
"PhotonAssay of material from our 2020 drilling campaign has delivered exceptional results, showing there is more gold in the system than previously reported. Despite running it on a relatively small number of samples, we can clearly see that this assay method is detecting more gold in most samples submitted. We went from 84 reportable intercepts (gold over 0.2 g/t) to 117. This is 39 per cent more reportable gold than obtained from fire assay analysis.
"Out of 117 reportable samples, 99 have returned higher maximum values by PhotonAssay than by fire assay. This means that, for 85 per cent of samples, PhotonAssay yielded higher gold values.
"In one instance, fire assay had returned less than 0.01 g/t Au and the best PhotonAssay came back at 0.7 g/t Au (a over-13,900-per-cent uplift). This turns a seemingly barren zone into a prospective area with strongly anomalous gold. In this instance, the 0.7-gram-per-tonne-gold result was even flagged as heterogeneous, confirming nugget effect. This is of prime importance -- the nugget effect is the main attribute of true high-grade gold deposits.
"This round of analysis fulfilled our expectations with regards to the assay method and pushed us to negotiate an exclusivity agreement with MSA laboratories on the first PhotonAssay laboratory to be installed in North America.
"This new laboratory will be set up in Val d'Or, Que., approximately 750 km [kilometres] from the Eastmain project and will give Benz a much shorter turnaround time on drill core assay, solving a problem which has been impacting many explorers worldwide