Canasil Resources (TSX-CLZ) CEO Bahman Yamini on Private Placement Announcement & Drill Programs at Exciting Gold-Silver Projects in Mexico
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Canasil Resources (TSX-CLZ)(OTC: CNSUF), Mr. Bahman Yamini. Bahman, how are you today?
Bahman Yamini: I'm fine. Thank you very much, Gerardo. Great to be with you and good to see silver is now above $20, which is a great sign.
Gerardo Del Real: Silver is above $21. Gold is flirting with $1,850. It's at $1,841 as we speak. You just announced a $1 million dollar non-brokered private placement, which is an important placement for a couple of reasons. One, it's going to give you the flexibility to expand an existing drill program. And two, it's going to allow you to segue into a second one.
Can you provide an update first and foremost on how drilling is advancing and then what to expect moving forward? Because you have a lot of news flow planned for the remaining quarters this year.
Bahman Yamini: Absolutely. We're making steady progress on the ground at the Nora project. It is going well. The drillers and our crews are settling in and they're making steady advance. We should have the first hole finished by the end of this week, and probably expecting results in the second half of August after they process the core and send the samples into the labs.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now the private placement, from how I understand, it's going to allow you to expand the program at Nora. It was initially intended to be 1,500 meters. I believe that's being expanded to 2,500 meters. Is that accurate, Bahman?
Bahman Yamini: Exactly. The previous placement we did was to fund the 1,500-meter program on the Candy vein, which is a very prominent vein and where there are some old workings we are drilling below, but also a vein that we trace with the faults, et cetera, for 3 kilometers. It has a 900-meter outcrop with significant surface samples. So it's a very exciting target that we've implemented and that's in progress right now. So the drilling is going on as planned on the Candy vein.
There's a second vein, the Nora vein, which is about 500 meters northeast of the Candy vein. It's an extremely intriguing target. It's slightly higher elevation than the Candy vein, about 40 meters higher up physically. That means that the vein is just outcropping. We just have around a couple hundred meter outcrop. Very, very high levels of an epithermal system. We've got trace sulfides. We've got a lot of the geochemical mix that you get right at the top of the boiling of these systems.
That for us is very exciting, in addition to the fact that we see widths of up to 9 meters in that vein. We see something that's sitting right below the surface. It's perfect because it hasn't been eroded away but also it's not sitting very deep, just poking under the surface. We hope that we can tap into the rich zones where the silver and gold were deposited. So that's an exciting target. It's exploration, but it's a very exciting target.
The combination of the two veins, and also disseminated silver that we see in surface sampling at Nora, make it a very high-potential project and potentially a very large mineralized system. With this financing, it will be fantastic to be able to test two targets instead of just the one that we had initially planned.
Gerardo Del Real: Well, that would mean a new discovery, which of course this market is rewarding and anticipating frankly now. Following this program, you're going to get right into La Esperanza, which is a property that I'm familiar with. You've had some spectacular results in the past. We then came across the bear market that we're finally out of and everything was put on hold for a bit. Can you talk a bit about the history of La Esperanza and what the plan is there? Because I'm excited for that property as well.
Bahman Yamini: We are as well. It's a very large property. It's a very large area, around 15,000 hectares, about 150 square kilometers. It hosts 4 major, high-grade epithermal vein systems. Silver, lead, zinc principally. On the main La Esperanza vein that we have been drilling in the latest rounds of drilling in 2017, we were also getting some very nice gold grades coming in, which was a real bonus. It's a real prize for us, La Esperanza. We think it has the potential for hosting a very large system.
It's 30 kilometers west of Pan American Silver's La Colorado mine, which has become their flagship mine producing 8 million ounces of silver per year at under $3 US cash cost per ounce. This is what happens when you get these systems with high silver grades, but also the other metal credits like the lead and zinc, which help to pay for the mining costs, or in some cases cover the entire mining costs.
We have identified the main high-grade ore shoots with some very good result. It's a nice wide vein, again, with very high-grade numbers coming from it. We will be drilling step outs along strike and below those two ore shoots going to the northwest and to the southeast to expand the system at the La Esperanza vein. Then we also have the possibility of maybe putting a few holes into one of the other veins, which again would be a new discovery scenario there. It's a very, very exciting combination.
Gerardo Del Real: The main catalyst near term, obviously, is going to come from the results of the drilling, but you have a portfolio of exciting projects Bahman. Can you speak to some of the other projects? I got to believe that you're receiving interest on those as well.
Bahman Yamini: Yes, we are. We have 6 projects in Mexico. Four of them are drill ready. As I said, the priority for us is Nora, La Esperanza, our Salamander project, which is just sitting 20 minutes outside the city of Durango. It's a potentially very large system, very large disseminated silver-copper-zinc-lead system. It's very similar in geology to some of the projects that have been getting a lot of excitement, like Discovery Metals' Cordero project. You know what's happened to Discovery Metals based on that project and the drilling they've been doing and some high-grade zones that are coming back there. Also with Southern Silver's Cerro Las Minitas project, which is just across the highway from us. The beauty of this project is it's literally 20 minutes outside the city of Durango from our office and our operating base, but wide open.
We have another epithermal vein project in Mexico called the Vizcaino. Again, an extremely prominent vein that's closer in Northern Durango to Nora. Very prominent vein, which we traced long distances with very wide width of up to 12 meters. Again, very high level. We've seen the coarse boulders on surface and these things can hold real surprises. They're like little sleeping giants there. Hopefully we'll get a chance, with the funding now, with the greater market interest, to get the funding to start poking and waking them up.
Gerardo Del Real: For those not familiar, you mentioned a Discovery Metals. That's a company that traded right around where you're trading now, Bahman. Canasil is at about $0.25. Discovery was right around that $0.25 mark back in April, and that stock trades $1.45 Canadian today. I think it speaks to the velocity in the junior space when we have a bull market and you are able to match that market with delivering with the drill bit. It's important to be able to do that and that's up to Mother Nature and geology. But fingers crossed, exciting times. Anything else to add to that, Bahman?
Bahman Yamini: No, I think we have a very exciting time. We're planning 5,000 meters of drilling between now and December. With success there, we hope to be able to add the funding and increase that to the range of 7,000 to 8,000 meters in the first half of 2021. So we're hoping that this will be a process that will be generative and lead to really expand the drilling where we can really start getting back some results from these projects. It's been a long time to prepare the projects, but all the early work has been done.
That's the great point about the Canasil projects, is that we've done all the early work. We're not doing surface geochem and geophysics and airborne and this and that, we're doing discovery drilling. That's where you get the biggest lift in value creation on an exploration project.
We've got multiple projects, multiple targets to which that applies. We're very excited about that process. So I'm just hoping the markets keep going this way, which they are forecast to do, the metal prices stay strong, and we get some really good results.
Gerardo Del Real: Just to be clear, you're expecting the first set of assays right around the second half of August. Correct?
Bahman Yamini: That's right. The first hole will be finished by the end of this week. By the time they get the core processed, send it in and then that'll take about a week, which will be the end of July, and then two to three weeks for the assay. So right in the second half of August, we should have the first set of assays coming in.
Gerardo Del Real: Bahman, thank you so much. I encourage everyone to go to Canasil.com, get familiar with the projects. It's a great portfolio. It's a portfolio that Bahman was able to maintain during the bear market and I think that's going to pay off in spades for you. So thanks again, Bahman.
Bahman Yamini: Great. Thanks very much for your interest, Gerardo. Appreciate it, have a great day.
Gerardo Del Real: You as well.
Bahman Yamini: Bye now.