Project Overview

The company holds a 100 % interest in the Zaer licence which comprises four 16 km² permits totaling 64 km². Zaer is located approximately 80 km south of the capital Rabat and is accessible via two asphalt roads and contains a network of tracks. The licence was selected on the basis of the Company's substantial technical dataset on Morocco. This dataset includes geological maps, historical mineral occurrences, regional geochemical data and satellite-borne remote sensing data.

Zaer is located in the Central Moroccan Hercynian Massif, which contains several large granitic plutons that intruded into a sequence of Ordovician to Devonian aged sediments. The region hosts numerous active and historic mines and development projects for copper, tin, tungsten, lead, zinc and fluorite. Nearby operations include ONHYM's Rhouirat N'Has tungsten-copper project and the Sokhret Allal tin-tungsten deposit, with active projects elsewhere in the region including Managem's El Hamman fluorite mine and Kasbah Resources (ASX:KAS) Sn development projects at Achmmach and Bou El Jaj. The mineralisation is reportedly hosted in veins, stockworks, skarns and greisens within granites and the surrounding metamorphic aureoles. Aterian's licence targets 12 km of the Zaer granite's metamorphic aureole on the western margin, in addition to six historically-mapped quartz veins with a combined strike length of roughly 2.35 km that reportedly host copper mineralisation.

Exploration Programme

Aterian Resources' technical team have undertaken a remote sensing programme and an initial phase of reconnaissance exploration at the Zaer licence focusing on the granite, its metamorphic aureole and the associated historic Cu-occurrences. Along the granite's margin, highly foliated metasedimentary rocks, including quartzites, phyllites and schists, are common with porphyroblasts of elongate andalusite and sporadic milky-white quartz veining evidencing the contact metamorphism and hydrothermal circulation respectively. At the eastern permit within the granite, several articles of sub-in-situ quartz float were observed hosting localised Cu-secondary mineralisation. The next phase of work is likely to include detailed geological mapping and further rock-chip sampling.

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