Highland Redeveloping Michigan #Copper Country

Access to good quality historical data and drill-core is a big boon for Highland. Not only will they save a great deal of money by not having to repeat previous work, but they will be able to use that data to more confidently plan new exploration activities.

LONGUEUIL, QUEBEC–(Marketwired – July 3, 2014) – Highland Copper Company Inc. (TSX VENTURE:HI) (“Highland” or the “Company”) is pleased to report the results from an initial exploration program conducted at the White Pine North Project located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, an area which has historically been one of the most important copper producing regions in the United States. Figure 1 shows the projects in which Highland has an interest.

Highland has recently completed the interim closing of the acquisition of the White Pine copper project from Copper Range Company (“CRC”). The production at the former White Pine mine from 1952 to 1995 was 198,070,985 short tons averaging 1.14% copper, for approximately 4.5 billion pounds of copper. Mining ceased at White Pine in 1995 due largely to depressed copper prices, although significant amounts of mineralization remained, particularly to the north of the former mine (“White Pine North”). In 1995, CRC completed an estimate of resources at White Pine North based on 526 diamond drill holes. Highland’s exploration efforts are focused on that area, with the objective of completing a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource estimate in 2014.

White Pine North: Results from the 2014 Phase 1 In-Fill Drilling Program

During March and April 2014, Highland completed nine diamond drill holes totaling 8,853 meters using HQ core size at White Pine North (Figure 2). Three holes were cased for re-entry during the winter of 2015 because of spring melting. Highland also completed eleven wedges from eight holes to obtain approximately 435 kg of mineralized samples for metallurgical testing. Nine of the 12 holes were drilled vertically and core recoveries averaged over 99 percent. Highland had designed its 2014 winter drilling program both to in-fill the historical drill grid and to expand the historical mineral resource area. The results from this first phase in-fill drilling program are consistent with results from previous CRC drill programs and confirmed copper- silver mineralization from adjacent historical drill holes.

Analytical results for the mineralized zones from the 2014 drilling program are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Drill hole intersections from the White Pine North Project

“Parting Shale” is an assemblage of five mineralized stratigraphic units at the base of the Nonesuch Formation. The Upper Shale consists of a similar assemblage of four mineralized units about 1.2 meters above the Parting Shale.

Activation Laboratories in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada (IOS 17025 accreditation), assayed all samples using an ICP method tailored for the project samples, followed by a metallic procedure for samples containing at least 0.1% Cu. Highland applied industry standard QA/QC protocols to all steps of the drilling program.

White Pine North: Validation of Historical Drilling Data

In January 2014, Highland initiated an analytical program to validate historical assay results from 51 diamond drill holes completed by CRC in the White Pine North deposit. Thirty-six of these holes were drilled between 1958 and 1980 with both BQ and AQ core, while the other 15 holes were drilled in 1994 and 1995 with NQ core.

Highland’s validation program used a 1/4 cut of the original whole core from 883 historic sample intervals. This resampling duplicated the exact interval previously sampled and assayed in the historical programs. The remaining 1/4 of the original core was retained as reference material. The validation analytical technique used both a screen metallic assay method and a 2.5-gram digestion ICP assay method to determine total copper and results from both methods were in good agreement. The location of the validated historical drill holes is shown on Figure 2.

The results from this validation program are shown graphically on Figure 3. Highland considers the correlation between the historical and validation assays to be excellent, showing no bias between the two groups of assays. Highland plans to use the sample values from the original program for a future resource estimate at White Pine North.

Plans Going Forward

Highland plans to complete a second phase drilling program by boring ten drill holes totaling approximately 6,100 m, during the summer and fall of 2014. These drill holes will focus on the higher-grade central portion of the deposit.

Highland has retained G Mining Services Inc. to carry out a number of technical studies including metallurgy, infrastructure requirements and mining methods that are intended to be used in a future prefeasibility study. The Company has also retained the services of Golder Associates to initiate hydrological studies of the area overlaying the White Pine North deposit.

Qualified Person

The technical information contained in this news release has been approved by Carlos Bertoni, P.Geo. Highland’s Project Manager. Mr. Bertoni is a qualified person as defined in NI 43-101.

ABOUT HIGHLAND

Highland Copper Company Inc. is a Canadian exploration company focused on exploring and developing copper projects in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, U.S.A.