Camino Announces Exploration Results at Los Chapitos and Further Exploration Plans in Peru

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESS Newswire / May 6, 2025 / Camino Minerals Corporation (TSXV:COR)(OTC PINK:CAMZF) (WKN: A116E1) ("Camino" or the "Company") is pleased to announce exploration results at its Copper-Silver stratabound Los Chapitos copper project ("Los Chapitos" or the "Project"), including drilling and additional mapping, trenching, and sampling along both the La Estancia and Diva copper mineralized trends. The Company is targeting large-scale disseminated manto-type copper-silver mineralization to support resource delineation studies at Los Chapitos. Camino and its partner Nittetsu Mining Co., Ltd. ("Nittetsu") plan to commence the next phase of drilling in the second half of 2025. The Los Chapitos copper project is located near the coastal city of Chala in the department of Arequipa in Peru.

Juan Carlos Castelli, Consulting Geologist from Chile, said "the Los Chapitos property is inside the northern continuation of the metallogenic Cu-Ag belt defined in Northern Chile, with operating mines such as Michilla, Las Luces, and others. We are working with Camino and Nittetsu on an aggressive exploration program, led by geological mapping and sections interpretations, geochemistry and magnetometry focused to drill the best target areas to increase the known resources in order to make a new economic copper discovery", (Figure 1).

Yoshikazu Fujimoto, Senior Geologist at Nittetsu, stated that "the geological work that we are completing at Los Chapitos is an effort to focus our exploration taskforce on bulk mineralized targets and to screen a very large land position of over 220 square kilometers that has many copper-mineralized showings."

"To make new copper discoveries, we've got to step out and continue to drill untested prospects. The geology at Los Chapitos indicates tremendous prospectivity and notably, Rio Tinto has staked ground adjacent to our claims, so we've got to put the drill where the bulk copper potential exists and keep drilling. We plan to continue drilling in the second half of 2025 at new discovery targets" said Jay Chmelauskas, CEO of Camino. "Camino is pursuing two value creation fronts, developing our permitted Puquios copper mine in Chile, and continuing to exploration drill for new copper discoveries in Peru in 2025," Mr. Chmelauskas added.

The greenfield drilling campaign of 996.7m at the Pampero prospect increases the meters drilled at Los Chapitos to a total of 27,624 m. 94% of the historic drilling meters have been drilled along the Diva Trend, with significant copper intercepts at Adriana, Lourdes, and Diana prospects. After increasing the EIA permitted areas at the Project, Camino is now beginning to drill test new prospective areas, particularly along the La Estancia fault for new copper discoveries (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

Highlights:

• The drilling campaign has validated the Pampero prospect as a Cu-Ag mineral system to support more exploration along the Estancia thick skin fault for economic copper intercepts.

• Copper oxides mineralized in the Pampero area have shown continuity at depth with geochemical results at drill hole DCH-118 with copper grades up to 0.5%, silver 3.15 ppm at a depth of 157.6 m following the main structural control.

• Surface rock chip sampling over 500m at Pampero show geochemical anomalies of copper, with grades up to 3.8% and 4.0 ppm silver, as black and green copper oxides (chrysocolla, tenorite).

• The geology at Pamperoexhibits chlorite-smectite alteration bands linked to copper mineralization increasing the opportunity for discoveries at Sombrero Blanco, the Company's next prospect to the southeast along the La Estancia Fault.

• More exploration work has been undertaken along the established Diva Trend to generate step-out drilling targets at prospects such as Katty, Diana, and Lourdes that have demonstrated significant copper intercepts in previous drilling campaigns.

Figure 1. Locations of main copper exploration trend and targets.

Camino's recent drilling campaign strategy has targeted prospects along the untested copper trend of the La Estancia fault that spans over 12 kilometers in NW-SE direction, parallel to the Diva Trend. New exploration targets at Sombrero Blanco along the La Estancia Fault were geochemically sampled and geologically mapped as potential next drilling targets, while historic exploration targets like Katty, Diana, and Lourdes within the Diva Trend were geologically reinterpreted and resampled to potentially expand the known copper zones. The Company also plans to continue drilling campaigns and surface mapping along the Diva, La Estancia and Atajo Trends to expand known mineralized zones with many prospective targets (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Los Chapitos project portfolio.

Greenfield drillholes at Pampero were located more than 10 km to the north-west from the known copper mineralization in the Adriana copper zone (Figure 1). The program was designed to test buried copper stratabound mantos located near the copper-controlling structures like the Diva Fault Trend. In this first drilling phase at the La Estancia Fault, a total of 10 drillholes were completed to depths from 38 meters to a maximum of 200.4 meters for a total of 996.7 meters drilled (Figure 3). Drilling results are summarized in Table 1.

At Pampero, alteration and mineralization are controlled by the La Estancia fault and secondary north west and north south trending faults. This set of structures acted as feeders, while the volcanic rocks of the Chocolate Formation acted as receptors. Camino has been prioritizing their exploration in this volcanic sequence, which has the potential to host large-tonnage copper deposits. The program successfully identified or extended oxide copper mineralization northwest of the La Estancia fault, along the Pampero area (Figure 1).

Figure 3. Geology and drillholes at the Pampero prospect

Between December 2024 and March 2025, rock chips were sampled at Katty and Sombrero Blanco in sub-outcrops and outcrops along handmade trenches (sampling between 1m to 2m).

At Sombrero Blanco, 205 samples were taken with 78% of their total copper grades higher than 0.1% Cu (copper) and maximum grades of 0.06ppm Au (gold) and 12.0ppm Ag (silver), the chip sample V717989 over 1 m of sampling reached grades of up to 2.75% Cu and 0.42 ppm Ag in copper oxides like malachite, chrysocolla, and copper wad (Photo 1 and Figure 4).

At Katty, 25 samples were taken with 100% of their total copper grades higher than 0.3% Cu and maximum grades of 0.1ppm Au and 26.8ppm Ag, the chip sample V713818 over 2m of sampling reached grade up to 2.86% Cu and 26.2 ppm Ag in copper oxides like malachite, chrysocolla, and copper wad (Photo 2).

Photo 1. Left: Camino team sampling at Sombrero Blanco. Right: close-up of the mineralization in the trenches, green copper oxides (brochantite-malachite).

Photo 2. Left: Camino team sampling outcrops at Katty. Right: close-up of the sampling site, occurrence of green copper oxides (malachite-chrysocolla).

Figure 4. Geology and geochemistry of North Sombrero Blanco

Table 1. Summary of Drill Results March 2025, Los Chapitos Copper Project, Peru