NEWS

EMPRESA MINERA MANTOS BLANCOS S.A. (CHILE)

SPONSOR PRODUCTION OF GEOCODED MINERAL INDICES FROM CHILEAN GEOSCAN DATA.

Empresa Minera Mantos Blancos S.A. (EMMB), the copper producing, Chilean subsidiary company of Anglo-American Corporation, has agreed to sponsor the production of geo-coded mineral index maps for those parts of Northern Chile covered by Geoscan AMSS MKII data.  In an agreement signed last month, EMMB will fund the time consuming and labour intensive work of geo-coding the Geoscan data from which AGARSS will produce a series of indices for different styles of mineral alteration.

Indices for ferruginous, argillic, phyllic, propylitic and silicic alteration styles will be produced for each Geoscan flight line file and the output merged into mosaics covering standard 1:50,000 quadrangle map series.  These final image maps will be stored in digital format on CD-rom to allow EMMB to incorporate the indices into their in-house GIS.  It will also be possible to print each individual map or parts of each map at scales down to 1:25,000.

AGARSS expect  it will take approximately 1 year to geo-code the total Chilean data set which covers over 80,000 square kilometres of the most prospective parts of Northern Chile.  Completed map sheets will be delivered to EMMB throughout that period as and when they are completed and the sponsor will have 6 months further exclusive use of the product before AGARSS can make it generally available to the open market.

Argillic alteration index map	Standard Geoscan 17 8 2 RGB image

Both parties are excited about the project which  EMMB see as an opportunity to gain a significant exploration advantage in Northern Chile at a time when many explorers are cutting back due to the low copper price.  AGARSS see the project as a means of adding value to the already proven  Geoscan data.  The alteration style indices will be available as standard "off the shelf" products which will help all explorers focus their efforts and select exploration targets.  As exploration proceeds, AGARSS can provide further advanced processing using the full 24-channel Geoscan data over encouraging targets to produce detailed maps of individual alteration minerals.

AGARSS has extensive Geoscan data coverage in Western Australia, Queensland and Western U.S.A. Sponsorships are being sought for the geo-coding of data for all of these areas.

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