Montezuma Mining kicks off drilling to support manganese resource at Yanneri Ridge

Montezuma Mining (ASX: MZM) has commenced a drilling programme comprising approximately 9,000m of reverse circulation and diamond drilling at the Butcherbird manganese/copper project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

The purpose of the drilling is to support the maiden JORC Mineral Resource Estimate for the Yanneri Ridge deposit. The programme comprises infill drilling and is targeted for completion in late December 2010 or early January 2011.

The programme will also include step out drilling at Budgie Hill, Ilgarrarie Ridge, and Ilgarrarie Hill to better define the potential of these key target areas.

The third key aspect of the work is to provide diamond core to support more definitive metallurgical testing which is expected to yield better recoveries and potentially higher beneficiation grades than the work completed to date on RC chips.

The combined information from this programme will provide important inputs into a scoping study to investigate the commercial potential of the manganese mineralisation at Butcherbird which is slated for commencement mid January 2011.

A VTEM orientation survey is also expected to commence mid November 2010 and will cover several of the known manganese deposits as well as the Butcherbird copper prospect.

The survey will test the potential for this technique to be used as a regional exploration tool to find buried manganese and/or copper mineralisation within the Project area.

On October 14 Montezuma confirmed further large tonnages of beneficiable manganese mineralisation at the Yanneri Ridge, Budgie Hill, Ilgararie Ridge and Ilgararie Hill manganese Prospects within the Butcherbird manganese/copper project, after receiving the complete drilling results from phase 2 drilling.