Blackstone Purchases Third Diamond Drill Rig to Accelerate Drilling at Ban Chang

Blackstone purchases a third diamond drill rig to accelerate drilling the Ban Chang prospect at the Ta Khoa Nickel-Cu-PGE project in Vietnam (Refer to Figure 3);

• Blackstone owns two diamond drill rigs drilling Ban Chang East and the King Cobra Discovery zone (KCZ) at Ban Phuc;
• A third diamond drill rig will allow Blackstone to accelerate drilling at Ban Chang to supplement the ongoing study work focused on downstream processing to produce nickel sulfate for the lithium-ion battery industry;
• By purchasing a third diamond drill rig the Company has an “All-in” diamond drilling cost of US$50/m at the Ta Khoa project, a ~60% reduction in drilling costs relative to Australian industry averagesⁱ;
• Blackstone’s four maiden drill holes at Ban Chang all intersected massive sulfide nickel over a
  1.2km strike within a 1.2km long massive sulfide target zone defined by high priority electromagnetic (EM) plates (Refer to Figure 1).

Blackstone Minerals’ Managing Director Scott Williamson commented:

“Blackstone has made rapid progress over the past few months and we are very excited about the potential of Ban Chang. Our latest assays have confirmed a new zone of high-grade mineralisation which was previously untested at Ban Chang East. As we work towards completing our scoping study this quarter, we have now purchased an additional diamond drill rig to ensure we can progress the project as rapidly as possible as we systematically test our 25 massive sulfide targets.”

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