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

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN) CEO Michael Hudson on Discovering a New Copper-Silver Zone at the San Martin Project in Peru: “We Have a Tiger by the Tail”

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the Chairman and CEO of the Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you?

Michael Hudson: Top of the world down under.

Gerardo Del Real: I have to be honest Mike, I read this release a couple of days ago and the headline said, “Hannan samples 0.8 meters of 2.8% copper and 14 grams per tonne silver from new copper-silver zone at the San Martin project in Peru.” And I thought it was a duplicate. I thought that the newsfeed had erroneously duplicated the release from a few days prior to this. Then I read through it and pulled up the maps and dug a little more. And of course, no, you just keep finding these new zones and more mineralization. 

I can see where if the average speculator is not paying attention, all of this just starts looking like the same but this is incredibly encouraging yet again. It's lending a whole heck of a lot more confidence that the model and the analog that you believe this system could be, might actually turn into that. I know it's early and I want to caution everyone that it is early but this is getting really exciting really quick, Mike. Can you provide an overview here?

Michael Hudson: Well, this is a sediment-hosted copper system that exists on the eastern side of the Andes. It's a basin-scale target, we've got mining concessions over a 100 kilometers of strike. The prize is large and the thesis is that we have a system very much similar to the Kupferschiefer in Poland, which is a huge system. It's been mined since the Roman times but literally modern day mining has been going for 50 years and another 80 years ahead of them or something like that. It's the world single largest silver producer and the 6th largest copper producer today. 

So the prize is large and as you said, this is early really, we only have had the four teams running before we were locked down from December through to mid-March. So we've learned a hell of a lot more about this project only at the start of this year.

These samples were locked up in a shed until Peru started to open up again and they recently went to the laboratory. It's a new discovery so I think the best way to summarize it is the scale and determining continuity at different scales. There's no doubt we've got – through lots of past geological work by oil explorers – a very strong handle on the geology, the structure and the stratigraphy. We know we've got copper over plus-100 kilometers in a variety of different horizons that are very well constrained or understood. So that's a 100-plus kilometer scale. Now we've started to see copper develop over the 10 sort of kilometer scale, 10 to 20 kilometers, which is the southern part of the Sacanche claim. The Sacanche claim is 80 kilometers long in itself. That was where we were at. 

These new results are starting to fill in at that different level. Now we're starting to see continuity over the kilometers of scale. So these new discoveries were found – I mean, there's a photo in the PR – just on little tracks and little cuttings in the middle of the jungle. So they haven't been explored systematically, they've been partially sampled. But we're becoming predictive in the way we can find these areas. So we said, "Well, this layer cake geology must continue through this area." We went and explored and found this copper-silver zone and sampled it. That was only a day or two literally before we got locked down.

We're seeing the grades and widths that are mined in the Kupferschiefer, the 2 to 5 meters at 2% to 5% copper. We've found over all these different scales. But it's the continuity, that's the key point here, the continuity of the grade and trying to find thicker and thinner zones in these systems. That's how they will develop, they will change in thickness. It's our job now to start finding the sweetest spots and that we can move to drilling. That will be next year now, because of course we haven't been able to get on the ground and start permitting any of these areas for drilling. But there's a hell of a lot of geological work to do and we've got four teams ready and waiting to go back.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I know that you've taken the responsible route in the sense that you want to make sure that stakeholders and the team at Hannan is taking a safety first approach. Can you speak to that a bit? I know that you delayed getting back out there just a bit because you want to be cautious and respectful.

Michael Hudson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's a very weird world without a doubt and it's very hard to predict where it's going. Peru opened up on June 2nd, the phase two activities and that included exploration. Now, if you've got a mining camp or a very contained drill program and a camp where you can control people coming and going and protect the local people and your staff via strict protocols, then that's an easier exercise than exploring over tens of kilometers, even hundreds of kilometers here, where we're interacting with lots of different people in the community and ask our staff of wandering over large areas. We're doing regional reconnaissance exploration and that's very hard to socially distance in a way, right? We were going broad and big. 

San Martin is where we're working, the jungle areas or the high jungle areas right through Peru are now having a very hard time. The hospital systems are overrun, and it's just not the time and responsible time to go back up. Now we have people on the ground who are representing us, local people, through the whole 100 kilometers of trend. They are looking forward to us coming back. We've got local supporters who are ringing us and asking us when we're coming back. We want to get people back into working and jobs, which is a key motivation of course, but at the right time. We're monitoring on a weekly basis. We're not going to be last back in the field but we're certainly not going to be the first.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Anything else that you'd like to add to that, Mike?

Michael Hudson: No. Just the system's developing and we have a tiger by the tail.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Mike, thank you so much for the update, look forward to more.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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