Hannan Metals Rapidly Advancing High Grade Copper-Silver-Gold Projects in Peru

Hannan Metals (TSX: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on New Copper-Silver & Copper-Gold Discoveries in Basin Scale San Martin Project, Peru



Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Hannan Metals — Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you this morning?

Michael Hudson: I'm doing very well, Gerardo. Always a pleasure.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right into it. You've had a couple of very, very important news releases. The last time that you and I spoke, I described the news as a game changing copper-silver mineralization discovery over 18 kilometers at San Martin in Peru.

You had some news recently on both days, the 28th and the 30th, that again can really only be described, at the very least, as technically game-changing. Let's start with the news on the 28th. The headline reads:

Hannan updates results from 135,700 hectare, 100% controlled copper-silver-gold exploration projects in Peru.

Quite a bit of detail in that news release. I'm going to let you provide the context and then we'll pick it apart.

Michael Hudson: Well, it's all a matter of scale, I think here, Gerardo, is the way to simplify it. So our previous discussion was around defining scale from the tens to hundreds of meters at Tabalosos over that 18 kilometers. So we were very encouraged to see this huge system holding together at a closer scale.

This week… and our discussion here is really centered around what we're doing outside of the JOGMEC joint venture which is a huge area in its own right; you have plus a hundred kilometers. But two thirds of our ground is held outside that joint venture. So two thirds of our mining concession claims granted in applications are held in our own right and we're exploring in our own right.

We've got lots of teams going around the field making new discoveries. And then, in our own ground, it can be separated, basically, more or less that we're exploring a sediment hosted copper — about a third of that ground is our own ground — it's sediment hosted copper not too far from the JOGMEC JV.

And then, a few hundred kilometers south, we've got what is developing to be a very exciting discovery in its own right, early stage, but a new belt of porphyry copper-gold deposits in areas that really haven't been looked at much before.

And we started to talk about the different intrusive centers. We've defined seven intrusive centers over a very large area with lots of copper and gold in boulders and stream sediments and float and outcrop… and yeah, it's very exciting.

Gerardo Del Real: You've now identified high-grade mineralization with a boulder that assayed 1.4% copper and 21 grams per tonne silver. And this is 20 kilometers northwest of the Tabalosos JOGMEC JV project, again, on 100%-staked Hannan ground, correct?

Michael Hudson: That's correct. And it's the first time we've identified mineralization in these blocks. So the way that the story went was, basically, we were negotiating last year with JOGMEC and we had staked our 66,000 hectares of ground that eventually went into that JV.

During last year, we did a lot of work from satellite data, basically; so remote sense data that identified more targets through these back arc basins that looked prospective. And it was just a little too advanced down the path with JOGMEC and the approvals they were achieving internally. And we offered the ground into the joint venture to do the right thing and it was just a little too far down the process.

So they said, go and explore it yourselves, basically; we're happy with what we've got. So we staked the ground and we've just had teams in there. So the system continues out in those areas too; something like 45 kilometers west of Tabalosos. So what a system.

We see it with only one other company who's really staked the ground. And Hannan — where we were the first movers — have control of this vast basin that extends over such large areas. It surprises me at every moment really.

Gerardo Del Real: Again, you're looking at a massive, massive, massive area here. Let's get to the news that you had this morning:

Hannan commences groundbreaking 2,782 line kilometer lidar survey over the San Martin JOGMEC JV copper-silver project in Peru.

Again, quite a mouthful on the headline but a lot there. Once again, I'll go ahead and defer to you, Mike, and let you provide the context on the release.

Michael Hudson: So it's not an easy area in which we're exploring from a logistical point of view; this is high jungle, the High Selva, in Peru. And that's one of the reasons it's been untouched because it's a tougher area.

Access has dramatically improved over the last 20 years, and the safety of the area has dramatically improved over the last 20 years. But it's still tough to get up and down; steep slopes, lots of rain, fully vegetated, and where there's very little outcrop; we're seeing sort of less than 1%. And we've found lots of outcropping mineralization that we've discussed. And the soils have defined the continuity between those outcrops over larger areas. But we really needed another tool to help us define the stratigraphy and the structure.

And that's where this new survey has come in that really has changed only in the last few years. Lidar has been around for, well, many, many years. But the sensor technology now is such that we can collect huge amounts of laser beams that basically shoot out from a kilometer up in the sky from an airplane. There's something like a million per second laser beams are shot out from this sensor.

And then, most of them hit the forest canopy but a few of them get down to the ground every square meter. So we're hoping, basically, for one laser beam per square meter that hits the ground and returns to the sensor. And if you look at the last figure in the diagram — if you really are into this technology — it allows us to map the rocks and the faults and the structure and find the continuity of those pancake horizons that we're basically tracing that have been broadly folded and faulted. And then, we can put that in context with what we’ve found at-surface and become a lot more predictive.

So this is a survey that we've got high hopes for. The technology, as I've said, is dramatically improved. Some of the technology that we're employing has come out of the oil industry, the petroleum industry, where they've been doing this over the last few years in places like Papua New Guinea where they run these surveys ahead of their seismic surveys.

So this is really one of the first times it's ever been applied to geology as opposed to forest mapping or topographic mapping. But we're really targeting the geology here.

Gerardo Del Real: When do you anticipate being able to share with the market the results of the survey?

Michael Hudson: The survey will fly the Sacanche block first over the next coming weeks. We just have to find our weather window, and I imagine it will be a month or so processing and interpretation. And so that’s probably a couple of months away I'd say.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, exciting times. What's the rest of the year look like in the meantime for Hannan in Peru, Mike?

Michael Hudson: We've got many field teams; there's something like 12 people working in the Tabalosos area where we will be expanding out beyond that as our social teams are providing further access west of Tabalosos.

We've got a dedicated team on the porphyry copper area and another team running all of the stream sediments over our own ground. So that's a big mouthful in itself but lots of field work. We're permitting towards drilling at Tabalosos, and that work is ongoing as we speak. We've just had 20 people doing all of the baseline work for our environmental impact assessment there.

So lots of discovery, lots of data, lots of new technology, and working to those drill rigs next year in Q1 or late-Q1, early-Q2, I think, is a realistic timeframe for the permits to come through for those programs.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times! Thank you for that update. Looking forward to results from the sampling and the survey here in the coming months. Thanks again, Mike.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.