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

Cordoba Minerals (TSX-V: CDB) Hits Bonanza Gold Grades Plus Silver, Copper, and Zinc in Colombia

Gerardo Del Real: I had to have you on because you just had a news release here on January the 23rd, so let me read the headline back: "Cordoba Minerals Intersects 4,440 g/t Gold, 10.25% Copper, 24.7% Zinc and 347 g/t Silver Over 0.9 Meters in New Discovery." That is one hell of a hole. Can you share the details on it please?

Mario Stifano: I've got to tell you, that was probably the first time I was left speechless and Robert Friedland was left speechless. We saw those assays come in, your jaw just drops and you recognize pretty quickly that that is a very special world-class type of hole. To get not only the bonanza gold grades, but to get the amount of copper, the amount of zinc, the amount of silver in that one hole is just tremendous.

It's quite interesting because we had a board tour, and the very last hole that we drilled part of the board tour was this particular hole. You know that must have been a great omen for us, that we were going to get these kinds of grades out of this particular hole. A lot of luck is on our side here.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Now you called this a new discovery in the press release; can you add to that a little bit, and just provide some context to why you consider this a new discovery?

Mario Stifano: Great question. The Alacran ore body and the Alacran pit that we have initial resource of 53-54 million tonnes of 0.7 copper, 0.37 gold, which is a great high grade open pit, and we know it's going to get a lot bigger. This particular hole is quite different and distinct from the main mineralizing event at Alacran.

This is a carbonate-base metal vein. If you look at carbonate-base metal mine, a good example of that would be Buritica at Continental Gold because it's just south of us; they're at 10 million ounces, 10 grams. Porgera, which is one of Barrick's larger mines, used to be the flagship mine for Placer Dome.

These type of CBM style gold mineralizing events are usually extremely high grade, very large ore bodies. We hit one, and as you can see we've hit tremendous grade with that intersect. We think these particular CBM veins are dipping to the east versus the main mineralizing event at Alacran is dipping to the west, that's why it's never been drilled.

If you take a step back and take a look at it from a non-geological perspective, there's been 70 artisanal miners here mining for 30 years. I can tell you, they're not mining 1 gram gold here. This is for the very first time we've been able to drill in the village area where these artisanal miners are, because we have such a great relationship with them. They want us to be successful here, so they've allowed us to drill right in the heart of where they're mining. Bam, we pull out one of the best holes ever.

Gerardo Del Real: Wonderful. It's my understanding that from here on out the plan will be obviously to continue to test the extensions of Alacran, but also to test for the newly discovered CBM veins, is that correct?

Mario Stifano: Yes, this is going to be a multi-faceted exploration program for us. Every mining company would die to have what we have at Alacran, but we're not just satisfied with Alacran. We're going to continue to explore to make Alacran a lot bigger, as well as look for other Alacrans and other targets.

From that, we got a couple of ideas of where the mineralizing source for Alacran may be. Alacran would have been formed off of fluids that formed a porphyry. What we're always on the hunt for is where is that porphyry. We got some great ideas now because we're started to understand Alacran a lot better, so we're going to be drilling looking for that porphyry source.

In addition to that, we're going to be drilling to try to extend Alacran to depth because we know it's open to depth. We know it's open updip to the east. Now in addition to that with these CBM veins, we know there's additional CBM veins because we've gone now and looked through at some of the older core, where we probably just touched the sides of these CBM veins. Effectively, we were drilling parallel to these veins, not cutting them, which you need to do in drilling. We're seeing some high grade gold intercepts and some other drill holes, as well as zinc, which is telling us there's more of these around.

We're also going to be drilling looking to understand the potential size and scale of these CBM veins. Typically, these things go quite deep; we only yet know what the lateral width is and what the depth potential is of these CBM veins. I can tell you, we're going to drill this deposit aggressively and we will find out. We're going to be able to grow that hopefully significantly from that initial discovery.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. When will drilling resume Mario?

Mario Stifano: We're hoping to get drills turning again within the next two weeks. We spent the first couple weeks of the year in 2017, where the geos really went through and really looked at everything we've drilled for the year, and try and understand a little bit of what Alacran is. I mentioned this many times; the biggest deposits in the world are the most complex deposits in the world, they don't fit a textbook style. Everything we're seeing at Alacran, we can tell you, just does not fit a textbook style.

I can tell you, nobody, no geologist would have guessed that in the middle of this open pit, we now have another mineralizing event through these CBM veins. We're really trying to understand what's going on here. We spent the first two weeks of the year just going through Alacran, as well as the other targets. South of Alacran, for example, we've been going through all the geophysics that Typhoon is able to generate, it's the proprietary technology that Robert Friedland has, and it's been critical for us here in this district.

A kilometer to the south of us, we see a big geochemistry signature. We see the geophysics, and it looks like it's 2-3 times the size of Alacran. Hopefully when we drill, we see another Alacran there. The point here is, Alacran is special but we think there's multiple Alacrans in our district. We think there's multiple porphyries in our district. We're going to aggressively drill all these targets in 2017.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I like to remind everybody that this is a joint venture with Robert Friedland's HPX. Obviously, you're carried all the way through a feasibility study, so the spend on your end is minimal. What's your burn rate look like right now Mario?

Mario Stifano: Our burn rate is 1.5 million dollars a year. From a shareholder perspective, shareholders really luck out when they invest in Cordoba, because the downfall for a lot of junior exploration companies is you have these great discoveries, but you always got to raise $10, $20, $30 million to really go after these type of discoveries.

In our case, Robert Friedland pays every dollar, every dime, that is spent in Colombia. Cordoba only has to pay its corporate costs, its listing fees, its accounting fees. Nothing else on the exploration front is paid by Cordoba, which makes us quite special. We only have 86.7 million shares outstanding, and that share count will remain tight. We have to raise $1.5 million, $2 million dollars here or there to fund our corporate costs, but that's it. We're not going out to the market to beg for $20-$30 million at a time.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Can you remind everybody how much has been spent by HPX and Robert Friedland thus far on the project? You mentioned that your burn rate is only about $1.5 million a year. How much have they invested in the project thus far?

Mario Stifano: That's another great question. When we did the joint venture with Robert, he had a commitment of $19 million to spend over 7 years. That $19 million was spent in less than a year and a half. You can sew how excited HPX and Robert Friedland is on their discovery in this district. Since then we've continued to spend money, and we've allocated $6 million just to the end of April on this project.

The budget will continue to be refreshed. For those of you that followed Robert Friedland, the budgets are great but you need money to really make money in our field, which is particularly exploration. You got to spend a lot of money trying to understand what's going on here to find the big ones.

Robert is not afraid to spend a lot of money going after exploration type targets. He spent, when it was all said and done, almost a billion dollars at Oyu Tolgoi, as a great example; going after Oyu Tolgoi, which was one of the biggest discoveries in the world.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. I also want to remind everybody, and correct me if I'm mistaken Mario, but I believe that you have quite a few warrants that are exercisable at $1.50 if I'm not mistaken. You almost touched that yesterday share price-wise, but I know that that would bring a significant amount of cash into the treasury. Is that accurate still?

Mario Stifano: That is correct. Those warrants expire in February, so there is a limited timeframe to get those warrants exercised. It would be great to see our share price hit $1.50, but the $2.5 million those warrants would bring, we actually don't need them, need the money. If we're lucky enough to hit $1.50 we get some warrants exercised, we'll figure out what to do with those funds. Cordoba, because of our structure, we're really not looking for a significant amount of cash because we're very well funded with the joint venture structure that we have in place.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Mario, I'll be at the project here in the coming week, I'm excited to get out there and take a look in person. Thank you in advance for hosting me and having me out there, and thank you for your time today. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Mario Stifano: No. Again, I really appreciate you having me on for this interview and we really look forward to having you at the site. I think you're going to come away with a real special feeling of what's going on in our district here in northern Colombia. We really do think this is going to be the project that puts Colombia on the center of the map in Latin America.

Gerardo Del Real: It's going to be an exciting 2017 for sure. Thank you so much Mario.

Mario Stifano: Thank you.