Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Aztec Minerals (TSX-V: AZT)(OTC: AZZTF) CEO Simon Dyakowski on Hitting the Best Gold Drill Hole to Date at Cervantes JV Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Aztec Minerals, Mr. Simon Dyakowski. Simon, congrats on a heck of hole. How are you today, sir?

Simon Dyakowski: Thanks. I'm doing well. It was a great result for us. We put out three holes today. They were actually all solid but the hole five ended up being a real standout at 138.6 meters averaging 1.49 grams of gold.

Gerardo Del Real: And that included, and it should be noted, 51.7 meters of 3.42 grams per tonne gold. This is, of course, at the Cervantes project from the California zone, the best hole yet. You mentioned the other holes. There was some really, really great widths of mineralization here, right? Tell me a bit about how, internally, the team is feeling about the grade, about the controls and about the fact that, look, hole number five started from surface, right? That's 136.8 meters from surface of 1.49 grams per tonne gold in Mexico. So, pretty straightforward there, right?

Simon Dyakowski: Absolutely. And the team's feeling very optimistic about the project at this point. I'll note that hole five was collared 50 meters to the west of hole four, so that one was 167 meters at an average of about a gram. Actually, just over a gram. To show the continuity of the wide widths of plus one gram mineralization is encouraging. And then, of course, the high grade that you pointed out, the 51.7 meters averaging around 3.4 grams, it's very shallow so the potential economics of this project are obviously greatly improved when you have the high grade situated like that in relation to the topography of the ridge line of the California zone.

We're waiting eagerly for the results. To touch on hole six and seven, again, not as high-grade as hole five but these are step outs to the north of the main California zone, so right at the northeast edge of the center of what's looking to be a deposit here returned 75 meters of a gram, I think, in hole six. And then hole seven, a little more modest but still an encouraging result. That one was 4.42 grams per tonne over 64 meters. So, very much in line with our initial paths of drilling in 2018 in those two holes and then, of course, hole five driving the grade up with its over 130 meter width at nearly a gram and a half.

Gerardo Del Real: The open pit heap leach gold potential is very clear, right? But there's also the potential for deeper copper gold porphyry sulfide mineralization. How is the team feeling about that aspect of the project? Because I think you're well on your way to being able to prove out a million-ounce resource just from the open pit heap leach potential there. But there is the potential deeper, right? For some copper gold porphyry sulfide mineralization?

Simon Dyakowski: Absolutely. There's a very, very large chargability high right underneath the California ridge line and it's expansive and it broadens out at depth. With the success of the shallower drilling that we had been doing this past three months with the grid of 200-meter holes at a 60 degree angle, we elected to complete a more complete grid. Fill the gaps on the gold oxide cap. We do have some slightly deeper test with the RC rig but this is really going to morph into a core drilling program is the next step and that'll allow us to go much deeper into that sulfide target, so while we have a couple holes that scratch the top of it, we don't have a full deep test yet as of this point, so that is still something to look forward to in the future.

Gerardo Del Real: Look, so far every single hole that's been drilled at California has intersected that near surface oxidized gold mineralization. Excellent, excellent start to the drilling campaign. Looking forward to more news. What comes next?

Simon Dyakowski: Yeah. There's 15 holes still to come and again, we're only talking about the initial gold numbers on these new releases so we still are waiting for the full suite of elements, so that will include the copper and the silver. We expect to have ... As we've seen the last few weeks ... regular updates every one to two weeks. We expect to get another three to four holes in our hands and we'll hopefully disclose them in a timely manner, so through the end of March into April we'll be further explaining the picture of the gold oxide with California and getting a sense of what we plan to do next through the spring months into the summer.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Looking forward to having you back on, Simon. Thanks for the update on short notice. Appreciate it.

Simon Dyakowski: Yeah, it's great. Thanks for the opportunity to come on and talk about what we do best today.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Chat soon.