Formation Metals Inc. (CSE: FOMO, Germany: VF1) reports a successful start to its first proprietary drilling program at its N2 Gold Project in Quebec, Canada! During the initial drilling of the current campaign, visible gold was observed in two holes, including within a more than 30-meter-thick mineralized interval.
The ongoing, fully funded 30,000-meter program aims to update historical data, test the potential of additional gold zones, and establish the basis for a future, modern resource estimate.
The N2 Gold Project is located approximately 25 kilometers south of Matagami in the prolific Abitibi Subprovince. Formation Metals is focusing here on an advanced gold system, historically extensively drilled, with multiple mineralized zones, which, however, does not yet have a current resource estimate compliant with Canadian Standard NI 43-101. A historical resource estimate, however, already indicates nearly 900,000 ounces of gold.
Formation Metals: Visible Gold in Zones a and RJ
As part of Phase 1 of the drilling program, which has been underway since September 25, 2025, and comprises 10,000 of the total planned 30,000 meters of drilling, Formation Metals reports visible gold from two drill holes. In drill hole N2-25-001, fine-grained visible gold was identified within an approximately 4.5-meter-thick pyrite-bearing interval, accompanied by typical quartz-carbonate veins, as already known from historical mineralization.
Drill hole N2-25-013 is particularly highlighted. Here, the technical team documented visible gold within a 30.8-meter-thick, pyrite-rich section, which is also associated with the known quartz-carbonate vein system. This hole is located within the primary gold-bearing structural corridor of the A Zone and is considered an important indication within the program that locally higher-grade areas may occur within the known system, which is more focused on bulk tonnage.
The currently ongoing campaign is the first systematic drilling at N2 since 2008, when Agnico Eagle was last active in the RJ Zone. Historical drilling results from this zone, including intercepts of up to 51 grams of gold per tonne over 0.8 meters and 16.5 grams of gold per tonne over 3.5 meters, had already indicated the high-grade potential of this structure at that time. Formation Metals is now building on these efforts to better define the high-grade areas and extend the strike length of the known zones.
N2 Gold Project: Historical Resource and Exploration Priorities
The N2 Gold Project comprises 87 claims covering an area of approximately 4,400 hectares. According to historical data, a global historical resource of approximately 877,000 ounces of gold exists in total. This consists of approximately 18 million tonnes of rock with an average grade of 1.4 g/t gold (approximately 810,000 ounces) across four zones – A, East, RJ-East, and Central – plus an additional 243,000 tonnes with 7.82 g/t gold (approximately 61,000 ounces) in the RJ Zone. These are historical estimates that do not comply with today’s NI 43-101 standard and are to be substantiated or updated by Formation Metals with new work at a later date.
The current phase initially focuses on the A Zone and the RJ Zone in the northern part of the project. The A Zone is described as a flat-lying, well-connected, and geologically relatively consistent gold mineralization. Historically, approximately 522,900 ounces of gold at a grade of 1.52 g/t were identified here. Approximately 15,000 meters of drilling have so far delineated about 1.65 kilometers of strike – but according to Formation Metals, more than 3.1 kilometers of strike length remain untested. A large portion of the historical drilling in this zone intersected gold-bearing intervals, some with thicknesses of several tens of meters in the range of approximately 1.7 g/t gold.
The RJ Zone is considered a distinctly high-grade structure with the aforementioned historical resource of over 61,000 ounces at 7.82 g/t gold. To date, only about 900 meters of strike have been drilled; more than 4.7 kilometers of potential extension remain untested. Formation Metals is therefore focusing the current drilling phase on identifying new high-grade trends in both the A Zone and RJ, extending the known gold-bearing zones along strike, and specifically testing for potential extensions at depth.
Funding, Program Scope, and Objectives of Formation Metals
Formation Metals has presented a clearly structured financial and work plan for N2 for the current and upcoming exploration season. The company has working capital of approximately 13.7 million Canadian dollars and, according to its own statements, is debt-free. Including exploration grants and tax credits from the Province of Quebec, the planned budget for 2025 – 2026 amounts to approximately 8.1 million Canadian dollars. The current 30,000-meter drilling program is thus fully funded.
Phase 1, covering 10,000 meters, is primarily intended to provide discovery drilling along the mineralized trends in Zones A, RJ, and Central. The goal is to delineate new gold-bearing structures in the northern project area and to infill existing zones through infill and step-out drilling. Subsequent phases of the program will build on these results and lead towards a potential update of the resource base.
In this context, Formation Metals’ management also refers to the current gold price level, which is now over 4,000 US dollars per ounce, thus reaching more than five times the price level of 2008, when Agnico-Eagle last drilled at N2. Against this backdrop, the company aims to leverage the combination of existing historical data, visible gold in the first new drill holes, and a robust budget to further develop N2 as a potentially significant, near-surface gold project in Quebec.
Geology, Base Metal Potential, and Next Steps at N2
Geologically, the N2 Gold Project is located in an area of volcanic and sedimentary rocks integrated into regional anticlinal and synclinal structures. Three dominant deformation zones, running along NW–SE to WNW–ESE oriented structures, are considered key controls for the distribution of gold mineralization. These structural trends are typical of volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) systems in the Matagami region.
In addition to gold, Formation Metals is increasingly focusing on the potential for base metals. A recently conducted re-evaluation of historical drill cores has identified additional elevated copper and zinc grades in several holes already known for gold grades exceeding 1 g/t. The analyzed samples show copper concentrations between approximately 200 and 4,750 ppm (parts per million) and zinc grades ranging from about 203 to 6,700 ppm. Particularly in Zones A and RJ, the company sees indications of additional copper-zinc potential that has been barely explored to date.
For the 2025 exploration season, Formation Metals plans to concentrate its activities on the northern part of N2. Targeted IP surveys and further drilling along the main fault zones are intended to better model the geometry of the mineralized bodies. In the long term, the company aims to consolidate existing historical data and new results to establish the basis for an updated, NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate. In parallel, historical base metal data will be further evaluated and additional investigations conducted to more precisely define the copper and zinc potential of the N2 Gold Project.
With visible gold in the first drill holes, a large-scale, fully funded drilling program, and several still open strike trends in an established gold belt of the Abitibi, the exploration game has actually just begun for Formation Metals!
