Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Almadex Minerals (TSX-V: AMZ) CEO Morgan Poliquin: El Cobre is Shaping up to be a District-Scale Project of Multiple Copper-Gold Porphyry Systems

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me once again is President and CEO of Almadex Minerals (TSX-V: AMZ), Dr. Morgan Poliquin. Morgan, how are you this afternoon?

Morgan Poliquin: Excellent, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you're probably doing well because you've had some great news here. Let me read the headline here, "Almadex hits 227 meters of 0.57 grams per tonne gold and 0.25% copper including 74.8 meters of 0.65 grams per tonne gold and 0.32% copper and 96 meters of 0.76 grams per tonne gold and 0.28% copper." I'd love for you to share the details on the latest assays, Morgan.

Morgan Poliquin: Thank you very much for the opportunity. Well, we're taking a very progressive approach to understanding what we think will emerge into something very interesting at the Norte Zone. We have some vertical controls of the mineralization. We also have some horizontal controls. We have vertical dikes that we're tracing along strike and we can see that mineralization is also spread out horizontally so I think the picture is now emerging. We've drilled back towards the original holes from a pad about 400 meters away and, when you look at the geometry, it's hanging together very nicely. We're hitting where we hit in the past holes so we're confirming some scale now and some potential width. But we think, more importantly, through this and other holes we've drilled and are drilling, we're able to define an orientation to the dike zone, the mineralization, which way it's trending and I think we will be able to follow up on it very aggressively. That was the whole purpose of this drill program following up the discovery, was to better understand how to do a really comprehensive drill program that will follow.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now drilling is ongoing, is that correct, Morgan?

Morgan Poliquin: That is right.

Gerardo Del Real: Wonderful, wonderful. Now the second part to this release is that work is underway at the newly discovered Raya Tembrillo target located in the Villa Rica Zone which is about two kilometers to the south of the Norte Zone. I know that the outcrop that was recently discovered is something that was very interesting geologically to you. Can we talk a bit about that because I know in the past I've commented on the incredible infrastructure that you benefit from and so anytime that I hear outcrop and Morgan Poliquin excited I'd love to get your take on it.

Morgan Poliquin: Well thanks for that opportunity as well. It's unusual to find a porphyry system that has had no past work on it cropping out. To have the kind of channeled sample results that we have received is really unusual, I think, so then we combine it like you say with the fact that we're just few kilometers from a highway and that kind of infrastructure. It's not very often that a prospector expects to have that nexus of things happen. I'm sure there's many undiscovered deposits in the world that are cropping out in some remote place somewhere that no one's been to but it's getting rarer and rarer. You know, most of the exploration is deep to look underneath. So to find something cropping out like this is spectacular I think. We don't know what it means. There's no third dimension to it. We'll have to drill it.

We all know the risks in mineral exploration but just simply the fact that we have one gram porphyry material cropping out I think is special. It's two kilometers away as you point out and what El Cobre, increasingly is obvious, represents is a cluster of porphyry systems, multiple porphyry centers and each one merits its own exploration program and we're gearing up to do just that. We're building a trail in there as we reported and expect to be drilling that in the coming weeks as well as other areas of the property, too. So it's not just the Norte Zone, it's a broad area. We feel that we control an entire district of copper-gold porphyry systems and the coming weeks, months, and perhaps longer will paint the story as we aggressively drill.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now just to remind everybody or to put into context for those that maybe are new to the story, Almadex is actually in a traditional sense a prospect generator and you employ that prospect generator model. However, you've been fortunate enough and skilled enough, a little bit of both, right, to make a discovery with your predecessor company Almaden Minerals with the Ixtaca deposit. That was 100% owned property that now has a significant resource in place. The same is true for El Cobre so, although you have a portfolio of very robust projects, some that have been optioned out and some that will see drilling later this year, El Cobre is 100% owned. Is that correct?

Morgan Poliquin: That's right and our view is that I guess we're a little kind of literal because we view that we are prospect generators because we generate these projects ourselves. We have generally looked to the support of partners to develop multiple projects and we still do that. But in cases where we have the capacity to drill projects ourselves now and, in the case of El Cobre, we decided that was the right approach for the company. Our low-cost internal drilling as well as our broad team allows us to do that. At the end of the day, if we were to be fortunate enough to discover a large economic porphyry deposit, they can take a lot of capital to develop so I'm sure a partnership is something we've ... We're still open to partnerships but we feel that by taking some of the initial risk which we've reduced through the lowering of the cost of drilling that those are risks worth taking to advance a project.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now I encourage everybody to go to Almadex's website. So many juniors don't put quality cross-sections out or quality maps. You do a phenomenal job of that, Morgan. The website is AlmadexMinerals.com. Some really good maps, some really good cross-sections, and really good target descriptions of the El Cobre project which, as you mentioned, is appearing to be a district-scale project not just one deposit type target here, so exciting stuff. It sounds like it's going to be an exciting second half of the year.

Morgan Poliquin: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to your listeners. We see this the same way. We think it's going to be an exciting year. We're looking forward to reporting the results as they come in.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'm looking forward to having you back on as those results trickle in. Morgan, thank you so much for your time today.

Morgan Poliquin: Thank you.

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