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CERVANTES PROJECT OVERVIEW

• Aztec Minerals is 100% owner of the Cervantes Project
• Large land package, claims cover 3,650 hectares in mining friendly Sonora state
• Cervantes is a highly prospective porphyry gold-copper property located in southeastern Sonora state, Mexico. The project lies 160 km east of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico within the prolific Laramide porphyry copper belt approximately 265 km southeast of the Cananea porphyry copper-molybdenum mine (Grupo Mexico). 
• Cervantes also lies along an east-west trending gold belt 60 km west of the Mulatos epithermal gold mine (Alamos Gold), 35 km northeast of the Osisko Development San Antonio gold mine, 45 km west of the La India mine (Agnico Eagle), and 40 km northwest of Santana gold deposit (Minera Alamos).   View: Cervantes Project Location Map
• Phase 3 Core drilling program Underway (Q3-Q4 2022)
• The primary objectives of the 2022 core exploration program are to better define the open pit, heap leach gold potential of the porphyry oxide cap at California, evaluate the potential for deeper copper-gold porphyry sulfide mineralization underlying the oxide cap, and test for extensions of the California mineralization and at California North and Jasper.

Cervantes Property Highlights

• Large well-located property (3,649 hectares) with good infrastructure, road access, local town, all private land, water wells on property, grid power nearby

• Seven prospective mineralized zones related to high level porphyries and breccias along an 7.0km east-northeast corridor with multiple intersecting northwest structures

• Distinct geophysical anomalies, California target marked by high magnetic and low resistivity anomalies, high radiometric and chargeability anomalies responding to pervasive alteration

• Extensive gold mineralization at California zone, 118 soil samples average 0.44 gpt gold over 900 m by 600 m area, trench rock-channel samples up to 0.47 gpt gold over 222 m

• Already drilled the first discovery holes at the California zone, intersected gold oxide cap to a classic gold-copper porphyry deposit, drill results up to 1.49 gpt gold over 137 m and 1.00 gpT gold over 165m

• Excellent gold recoveries from preliminary metallurgical tests on drill core from California zone; oxide gold recoveries in bottle roll tests range from 75% to 87%

• California geophysical anomaly wide open laterally and at depth, IP chargeability strengthens and broadens to >500m depth over an area 1100 m by 1200 m

• Three-Dimensional IP Survey conducted in 2019 extends strong chargeability anomalies to the southwest covering Estrella, Purisima East, and Purisima West, coinciding well with alteration and Au-Cu-Mo soil geochemical anomalies, all undrilled.

California Target

In 2017-18, Aztec completed a Phase 1, 17 diamond core hole drill program, totaling 2,675 meters (m) (see news release dated June 26, 2018).  Phase 1 drilling tested the California target 900m by 600m gold-in-soils anomaly that averaged 0.44gpt covering hydrothermal breccias within a quartz feldspar porphyry stock intruding Paleozoic siliciclastic sediments. 

The Phase 1 drill program consistently intersected an oxidized gold cap to a porphyry-type gold-copper-silver system at California, including multiple 100+ meter widths of exceeding 0.40 gpt gold, spanning an 800-meter length and a 200-meter breadth, to a maximum vertical depth of 150 meters. The area tested by Phase 1 drilling represented only 30% of the surface gold soil anomaly.

Mineralization at the California zone is open in all directions. Highlights of the 2017-18 Phase 1 diamond core and 2021-22 Phase 2 RC (see news release dated June 14, 2022) drill programs are as follows:

• 137m @ 1.49 gpT Au incl 51.7m @ 3.42 gpT Au, 119m @ 0.091% copper in CAL22-005
• 165m @ 1.00 gpT Au incl 24.4m @ 4.25 gpT Au, 160m @ 0.065% copper in CAL22-004
• 152m @ 0.87 gpT Au, incl 33.5m @ 2.05 gpT Au, 123m @ 0.95% copper in CAL22-012
• 160m @ 0.77 gpT gold incl 80m @ 1.04 gpT gold, 0.11% copper in 18CER010
• 139m @ 0.71 gpT gold incl 20m @ 2.10 gpT gold, 0.16% copper in 17CER005
• 94m @ 1.04 gpT Au incl 15.2m @ 3.96 gpT Au, 55m @ 0.36% copper in CAL22-001
• 118m @ 0.63 gpT gold incl 43m @ 1.18 gpT gold, 0.16% copper in 17CER003
• 100m @ 0.75 gpT Au incl 9.14m @ 3.087 gpT Au, 138m @ 0.10% copper in CAL22-006
• 122m @ 0.60 gpT gold incl 62m @ 0.88 gpT gold, 0.06% copper in 18CER007
• 170m @ 0.42 gpT gold incl 32m @ 0.87 gpT gold, 0.06% copper in 18CER006

Preliminary metallurgical tests on California drill cores were conducted in 2019 (see news release dated March 12, 2019).  Drill core samples were grouped into 4 separate types of mineralization: Oxide 1, Oxide 2, Mixed Oxide/Sulfide and Sulfide.  The preliminary results of bottle roll tests showed excellent potential for heap leach gold recovery, as follows:

• 85.1% recovery on 2.0mm material and 94.3% on 75-micron material in sample Oxide 1
• 87.7% recovery on 2.0mm material and 94.2% on 75-micron material in sample Oxide 2
• 77.9% recovery on 2.0mm material and 89.0% on 75-micron material in sample Mixed Oxide/Sulphide
• 51.2% recovery on 2.0mm material and 78.7% on 75-micron material in sample Sulphide

Additional Targets

Purisima East – outcropping gossans, altered and mineralized diatreme breccias and porphyry intrusions marked by a 700m by 600m geochemical soil anomaly in 193 samples that average 0.25 gpt gold, a small historic ‘glory hole’ mine where rock chip sampling returned high-grade mineralization up to 44.6 gpt gold.

Estrella - outcrops of gossan and sulfides in silicified Paleozoic sediments near quartz porphyry dikes with rock chip samples up to 3.9 gpt gold and 2,010ppm copper.

Purisima West - a mirror image of Purisima East in size and type of gossans, altered and mineralized breccias and intrusions in association with gold and copper soil anomalies.

Jasper – 2017 trenching returned skarn/replacement-type mineralization up to 0.52% copper and 0.62 gpt gold over a 92.4 m length. In 2022 RC drilling found a broad zone of copper – gold mineralization in JAS22-001.

California North – coincident IP chargeability and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomalies with demonstrated gold – copper mineralization by RC drilling, it may be a north extension of the California target

Other targets – porphyry alteration and geochemical soil anomalies mark the Jacobo and Brasil prospects but more work is required to expand and define these targets

Phase 2 RC Drilling Results:

Table 1: Cervantes Phase 2 RC Drilling Select Multi-Element Results with Gold

Table 2: Results of Phase 1 Core Drill program:

To date, 1,183 soil samples have been collected spanning about 630 hectares with sample spacings from 25m to 200m. Robust gold in soil anomalies are found on California, Purisima East, Purisima West, and Jacobo: only the California target has been drill-tested. Gold in soil anomaly measures 700m by 700m covering Purisima East and coincides with large breccia bodies resembling diatremes with strong sericite and kaolinite alteration.

A 12.8km pole-dipole IP geophysical survey was completed in 2016 over 220 hectares covering portions of the California soil anomaly and the Jasper prospect. Strong chargeability anomalies starting from the surface to depths of at least 600m were outlined with values ranging from 5 to 80mrads and averaging 40-50mrads. Such broad, strong chargeability anomalies are often associated with large zones of disseminated sulfide mineralization typical of porphyry copper deposits. A 3-dimensional IP survey covering 520 hectares was conducted in 2019, extending the coverage from the 2016 survey towards the west and southwest covering 3 additional targets: Estrella, Purisima East, and Purisima West. Impressive and extensive IP anomalies were detected from near surface to depths of 500m on all three targets. Collectively, Aztec has 740 hectares of IP coverage on the project with open-ended anomalies confirming the extensive mineral potential.

A helicopter airborne magnetic-radiometric-VLF survey was completed in 2018, covering the entire property with 100-meter spaced lines flown at 40m altitude. The data show multiple magnetic highs spaced along the northern 1/3rd of the property, often coinciding with the targets. A large magnetic high sits under the California target, extending north and east, supporting the association of gold-copper with a magmatic source. A slight embayment is noticeable at California where the gold+/-copper mineralization was detected in the 2018 drilling.