Edmonton, Alberta — March 2, 2026 — Leads & Copy —
Metalero Mining Corp. (TSXV: MLO) has announced results from its recent Ionic Leach soil geochemical survey and geophysics program at the Sundberg target, within its Benson Project, located in the Quesnel Trough of central British Columbia.
The Sundberg target was initially staked to cover a double-lobe QUEST-AI target 35 km northwest of Mt Polley. Copper-in-soil anomalies flank magnetic and conductivity highs with the first pass of exploration, according to Rob L’Heureux, President & CEO of Metalero Mining.
The company is also seeing the benefit of the ground magnetic and VLF-EM geophysical surveys as they produce high-resolution results relative to the existing historical data and could be indicating the presence of sulphide minerals at depth, according to L’Heureux.
Copper-in-soil results at Sundberg show southeast trending anomalies which flank the strong magnetic signature and some of the conductivity highs from the VLF-EM survey (Very Low Frequency-Electromagnetics). The copper anomalies, with a combined area of ~5 km2, are open in multiple directions and require follow-up exploration work.
The two 2025 Ionic Leach programs, conducted in the spring and fall of 2025, were designed to evaluate and refine copper-gold targets across the underexplored Cantin area, where historical exploration and recent Geoscience BC Artificial-Intelligence (AI) work has indicated strong potential for porphyry-style mineralization known as the QUEST targets. A total of 835 soil samples have been collected at the Cantin, Sundberg, and Chiaz targets with a 100-metre sample spacing and sample lines 500 to 1,500 metres apart.
The Benson Project is strategically located in the Quesnel Trough, one of Canada’s mineral belts. The Quesnel Trough is a Triassic/Jurassic-age belt of volcano-sedimentary and intrusive rocks which hosts >360 alkalic copper-gold porphyry occurrences and deposits. The >1,500 km long Quesnel Trough runs through the middle of BC stretching from the US to the Yukon Territory and hosts several types of gold deposits and numerous major mines which produce copper and gold as well as variable amounts of silver.
High profile and long-lived mines in the Quesnel Trough include Highland Valley, Mt Milligan, New Afton, and Kemess which are complemented by recent exploration work including Woodjam, MPD, Kwanika, and the extensive staking by Australian mining giant, the Fortescue Group.
The Benson Project lies close to infrastructure and is traversed by Highway 26 and a vast network of logging roads allowing for ready access to all parts of the Property and capital-efficient exploration. The large land package covers 5 different target areas illuminated by recent Artificial-Intelligence (“AI”) work by Geoscience BC (Mitchinson et al., Geoscience BC Report 2022-07). This AI study incorporated a wide variety of historical datasets including geophysics, geology, sampling information, and drilling data (where present) to identify high potential (“porphyry-like”) anomalies with similarities to known porphyry deposits elsewhere in the belt. Even the limited historical exploration at Benson has identified numerous gold and copper surface geochemical anomalies while modest, historical drill programs have intersected skarn and epithermal gold and silver mineralization, which are both intrusive-related styles of mineralization and are commonly associated with porphyry systems.
Metalero Mining Corp. is a Canadian-based junior exploration company focused on copper and gold projects in the Americas. Its 173 square kilometre, road-accessible Benson Project serves as Metalero’s flagship and is host to five prospects containing gold and copper within porphyry-related mineralized systems.
Metalero will be taking part in the upcoming Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Conference held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center March 1-4. Interested parties are encouraged to come by booth 2849 to speak to the MLO team.
The technical content of this news release pertaining to the Benson Project was reviewed and approved by Michael Dufresne, M.Sc, P.Geol., P.Geo., a non-independent qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.
Source: Metalero Mining Corp.
