Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Aldebaran Resources (TSX-V: ALDE)(OTC: ADBRF) CEO John Black on Quantum Shift Discovery at the Altar Copper-Gold Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Aldebaran Resources – Mr. John Black. John, how are you today?

John Black: Doing well, Gerardo. How are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I'm well. I'm well. I know it's Aldebaran Resources because you have a ton of copper and a whole lot of gold and it looks like you're finding a lot more copper. You just reported 1,059.5 meters of 0.4% copper equivalent. And I think there's a couple of important takeaways. The first being that it's in a previously untested area at the Altar copper-gold project. But the second one that you noted in the press release was the correlation between the geophysical anomaly and the mineralization and the fact that you didn't really even test a sweet spot because you didn't have all the data when the drill hole went in. Am I accurate in that?

John Black: Absolutely. As you'll recall in the Altar project, we have a large resource, very large resource already. And the reported resource comes from the Altar Central and the Altar East deposits, which we viewed were two separate deposits. And the area between these we felt was unmineralized. But the resource we report is from one pit that captures both and all of that middle ground kind of contributes to waste in the project overall. We've recently completed a deep looking 3D IP/Resistivity survey. It's new technology that allows us to see more deeply and more accurately within porphyry systems. And this technique has worked very well on some other deposits similar to ours, and we were quite pleased with the results. And it indicated that what we might be looking at is a much larger deposit and that these two deposits really connect together. We'd already had a hole, hole 221, going through a portion of that anomaly, it's kind of on the edge of the anomaly, that would test that and confirm it.

So we were happy to see that we were halfway down the hole in the new anomaly that we could see and that's what's come back. So that entire septum or area between the two known deposits turns out to be mineralized. The interval that we report bulks out to 0.4 over a thousand meters on that. Within that there are zones that are better than 0.5 or even better than 0.7 copper equivalent. And what's interesting on this hole is it's almost entirely within the wall rock too. It's not in the porphyry intrusions that causes mineralization. It's in wall rock, kind of consistent with being on the edge of the anomaly right now. So we're excited and actively laying out the drill program for next year. We've got a very large area to test that the geophysics indicates have a high probability of mineralization. So we're quite confident we'll be finding a lot more mineralization and good reason to believe that portions of that mineralization will be better grade than what we reported today. So this is kind of a quantum shift in the project for us.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. A quantum shift is well phrased. I got to believe that your strategic partners that just wrote pretty substantial checks at a premium, I should mention, from the recently oversubscribed and closed financing, have to be happy with this quantum shift as you described it.

John Black: Yeah. And it's important to point out the recent support we received from the investment from South32, coming in as a strategic investor in the project, that was done based on the work up to date. They weren't aware of the results of these holes when they made their decision. They were making their decision based on the project as we knew it before this. And now this indicates that it's a much bigger project, a much bigger deposit than we'd imagined. And when you work on a project like this, there are a couple different approaches. It's nice to find higher grade, but it's also nice to find a lot of volume. And we've been focusing on trying to better visualize and understand the better grade portions of this and the deposit keeps telling us, hey, look, I'm a really big deposit on this as well. And both are valid pathways to go forward. So this opens up, probably switches us more back to focusing on getting large volume on the project overall with these still recognizing there are sweet spots within it.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned in the news release, getting excited about being back on site in the second half of this year to start drilling. How much drilling are you contemplating or are you still kind of sorting through that?

John Black: We're just in the midst of doing that right now. As you'll recall, we have effectively three strategic partners on this project. We're earning into the project from Sibanye Stillwater. So they have an equity position in Aldebaran as well as we can earn 80% of the project and they'll have 20% of the project going forward. And now with South32 and as a strategic equity holder in the company and Route One, one of our principal investors. As our agreements with Sibanye Stillwater is that we on an annual basis, we present our work program for the following year and we'll be presenting that right at the end of this month. We're in the process of putting that all together now, as we get the final assays in from last year's work.

We'll present that to them. It's an open forum for us to discuss best pathway to go forward on that. And then we'll have our final program set early in September. Our plan is to get into the camp early this year to begin opening up the road and get into the camp in September and ideally be drilling in October, which will be the earliest we've ever drilled on the project.

Gerardo Del Real: A lot to look forward to. I understand you'll be at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit. I'm looking forward to catching up with you there, John. A pleasure chatting. Congrats on the game changing news today, and I'm looking forward to a phenomenal close to the year.

John Black: Great. Thanks so much. It's always a pleasure to speak with you and I look forward to catching up with you in the next few weeks.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, chat soon. Take care.

John Black: Take care. Thanks. Bye.