Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Gladiator Metals (TSX-V: GLAD)(OTC: GDTRF) CEO Jason Bontempo on a Copper Bull’s Dream

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Gladiator Metals, Mr. Jason Bontempo. Jason, great having you back on. How are you?

Jason Bontempo: I'm well, thanks, Gerardo. Good morning, for me.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, let's get right into it. You had one heck of a release. I don't want to call it a copper bull’s dream but this project, the more I dig into the scale and the exploration upside and the historical data that you're now processing, the more I think this might be a copper bull’s dream, which is obviously pretty great timing on you and the team's part. Tech just rejected Glencore's 22 and a half billion dollar offer. I think M&A in the copper space is going to continue. If you listen to people like Mr. Robert Friedland, he believes copper's headed significantly higher. And the release you had today announcing additional high-grade copper intercepts from some data that previously, you hadn't processed, just absolutely phenomenal. Let me highlight some of the numbers here. 89.61 meters of 1.89% copper. That's from 26.2 meters. It's shallow, right? 57.91 meters of 1.27% copper. That's from 53 meters. You have an intercept of 7.83 meters of 8.3% copper from 23.93 meters. So we'll put a link to the release, but congratulations, you're off to a heck of a start here.

Jason Bontempo: Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Gerardo. Look, the project, as I've alluded to before, it's not been public effectively. And what we've managed to do is digitize and collate what is close to 25,000 meters of drilling, and this is just at Cowley. So this was an area that originally Hudson Bay were planning to mine back in the late seventies, early eighties, and remember, it was only because of the copper price crash in 1982 that they didn't get to this spot. So what they'd done is they had drilled quite close space drilling on some outcropping, high grade skarn mineralization at Cowley. Quickly got to a resource and it's not... Well, in their day, a reserve, but then they shut the mine down so it never got mined. And then over the years our private owners obviously had worked the property.

So this is a project that's had over 200 holes drilled, as I said, 25,000 meters. And what it's really showing us is that, and you can see that there's some quite close space drilling, that there's some significant copper values, and they're near surface, there's shallow dipping. And clearly, our aim here is to show that it's going to be a significant resource and ultimately a reserve, and we're not finished with it. The prospect is open along strike. It's open at depth. The deepest vertical hole is 150 meters. It's only one of 39 prospects within this 35 kilometer long belt, so we are pretty excited about Cowley and we think that it's far from being tested for its size. There is real potential for this to be double, if not quadruple, the size that we see it already, just on the existing drill.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's talk about what you just said. You mentioned that this is just from Cowley, right? You have at least 30 known prospects. I've got to believe that's going to grow, but 30 known prospects within a 35 kilometer by five kilometer area. That's a potentially massive scale of a project and/or projects. The other thing that I'm really intrigued by is you mentioned that you fully intend to assay for all the future drilling. You intend to assay for silver, gold and molybdenum. Can you speak to that a bit? That was interesting to me.

Jason Bontempo: Yeah. So back in the day, Hudbay didn't assay for the other minerals and so we intend on doing that with our drilling. We also intend on doing that with the 10,000 meters of existing diamond core that we do have stored, a lot of it from Cowley. So what we're trying to allude to there is that the grades that you're seeing at the moment on a copper equivalent basis, we expect to be higher, because we do know that even back when Hudson Bay mined at Little Chief where they did over the 15 years, they might have 10 million tonnes, that they not only produce copper but they produce gold and silver as well. So it's really interesting to see what will come. But not only that. They only really assayed for copper at certain intervals on the core where they could see the mineralization.

Our geologist is saying that there's most likely a significant copper background in the whole of the diamond core that's going to add even more copper grade, so it is pretty exciting. We really now get to go drill our own holes as well. So I mentioned the 10,000 meters of existing core that we'll log an assay, but we've got a 3,000 meter program for ourselves kicking off mid-April. But what you should know is that just at Cowley, the 25,000 meters, the 220 holes, these are holes that not only were just drilled by Hud Bay. I think Hud Bay might have drilled 130 of them, but the balance have been drilled by our partners over the years and as recently as only a few years ago. So it's not like these are historic holes and that they all come from the early eighties. There's a number of holes that have been drilled over the last 10 years, so that's why we've got a huge amount of confidence in Cowley.

Gerardo Del Real: No, look, it's a heck of a start. What comes next, Jason? You alluded to it a bit but what comes next for those that may be impressed by the grades, the continuity, the scale, the depth of where you're finding a lot of this copper in the historic drilling? What comes next?

Jason Bontempo: Okay. Well, two parts. First will be a lot more activity at Cowley. If you look at Cowley and you look at even just our first cross section, it really does highlight that it is quite mineralized, actually quite thick, and also shallow and shallow dipping, so that's a real ideal scenario for drilling out a resource and a significant resource potentially. But what it's also showing us is that we think that Cowley actually has significantly more potential. If the listeners look at the column map plan in the news release, you'll see there's not much drilling in the south and that remains completely open. So what we want to prove is just start showing just how big potentially Cowley is.

But then in addition to that, so the second part of our work over the next three months will be also releasing more information on the balance of the historic drilling that occurred on the Whitehorse Copper Belt. So at the moment, we've obviously released over 200 holes at Cowley, but we've digitized over 800 holes, and so what we have is a number of other priority prospects. There's at least another four as we work from Cowley and we work north up the copper belt. So over the next three to six months, we're going to be showing as we digitize and collate and analyze, we're going to be releasing more information of other priority areas that we think have the potential to host significant economic copper tonnes at high grade, shallow, near surface, and shallow dipping as well.

So it's a combination of work at Cowley and also continuously releasing more information on the historic drilling which shows that this is potentially a copper belt that could end up being quite a significant mining camp. 100 million tonnes plus at one and a half percent, that's a very big mining camp for the style of mineralization that we have here, which is the low tonnage but the high grade.

Gerardo Del Real: Couldn't agree with you more. Exciting times for the company. It sounds like a boatload of news moving forward. Looking forward to chatting again soon, Jason. Thank you so much for your time and the update.

Jason Bontempo: We'll speak to you soon. Bye.