Avrupa Minerals Ltd. reported on first operations at its recently-acquired Kolima Project in the Pyhäsalmi VMS Belt in central Finland. The Company announced an agreement with privately-held Akkerman Exploration B.V. to
acquire subsidiary Akkerman Finland Oy (see news release of December 20, 2021) and has now completed the first portion of the acquisition (see news release of March 9, 2022). Akkerman Finland Oy (AFOy) holds three Mineral Reservations including two for copper-zinc massive sulfide deposits and one for potential of gold mineralization, and one Exploration Permit application for copper- and zinc-bearing massive sulfide mineralization at Kolima. The Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) originally discovered widespread, low grade zinc mineralization in the Kolima-Kärna area in the mid-1950's, and followed with extensive exploration in the district until the early 1980's. GTK drilled 70 holes in this area, identifying further widespread disseminated and occasional thin bedded (up to 1-2 meters), semi-massive sulfide zinc-lead-silver mineralization. The occurrences, spread over an area of 200-400 meters by 2000 meters in strike, are interpreted to be distal- type volcanogenic massive sulfide mineralization. However, GTK workers did not observe proximal-style sulfide massive mineralization during the historic work. No further exploration followed until AFOy returned to the area in 2019 to check regional geology, review selected historic drill core, and sample the core with a handheld XRF machine. AFOy observed, at the time, that mineralization was more widespread and more intense than expected after review of the old reports. Relogging of the drill core showed that significant mineralized intervals had not been sampled. Subsequently, AFOy requested a mineral reservation from the Finnish government (Tukes) of 187 km2 in early 2020. Based on compilation and interpretation of historic drilling results, geologic mapping, and airborne magnetometry, AFOy commissioned a SkyTEM survey of 94 line- kilometers over Kolima-Kärna target areas in 2021. The work produced three significant target conductors, two at shallow depth (20 to 100 meters), and a third at intermediate depth (125 to 250 meters). Targets 1 and 3, located along strike of the apparent mineralized host rock, appear to be the most interesting, based on correlation with previous work and re-interpretation of the historic data. While also interesting, Target 2 is located, for the most part, under Lake Kolima, and deemed partially inaccessible for social and environmental reasons at this time.