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

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN) CEO Michael Hudson on the District-Scale, Sediment-Hosted San Martin Copper Project in Peru

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

Michael Hudson: G'day from Down Under. I should say morning here, but very well. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thanks for coming on early in the morning your time. Copper is flirting with $3 a pound. It seems like China and the U.S. are further in their dialogue since the last time we spoke. That of course is positive for the base metal price. The other side of that is that a lot of the inventory is coming down. So the copper backdrop is good, a great time for Hannan to secure an additional 25 kilometers of mineralized trend at the San Martin sediment-hosted copper project in Peru. You're putting together a district-scale base metal play in Peru. Can you talk to us about the latest piece of news, Mike?

Michael Hudson: It's basically done what we set out to achieve here, Gerardo. We've got 75 kilometers of this trend with copper coming out into creeks of this very encouraging style of mineralization that produces plus-20% of the world's copper. This is an unknown discovery essentially. We've got 75 kilometers, as I say, of a 110-kilometer basin. So we've got a majority of it, first mover advantage, and the first movers, you know, are traditionally those that make the big discoveries first and that's what we're aiming to do here.

Gerardo Del Real: I think it's interesting, Mike, that you have the base metals covered obviously with the copper and some zinc there, but there's also a precious metals component with the silver. A lot of these targets appear to be copper-silver targets. Can we talk about that aspect of the project?

Michael Hudson: So Sacanche is this new area that extends the trend to 75 kilometers. It's an additional 25 kilometers, as you said, and there's two styles of mineralization that we've identified there. One is the sediment-hosted copper that we found 40 or 50 kilometers north of us at Tabalosos, and that was over 15 kilometers in creeks, grab samples averaging 2.8% copper and almost an ounce silver. So that's the main target here.

But in these systems, in these mineralized basins, where sediment-hosted copper forms, like in the Zambian Copperbelt – and this is very much an analog for that style of mineralization – there are other base metals that form on the peripheries around the sediment-hosted copper at slightly different stratigraphic positions. But what we've got down at Sacanche is probably one of the most encouraging pieces of news is that we've got gossans up to 80 meters thick that are running a few percent lead and zinc.

They're anomalous in copper. They show this evolving basinal system that can develop very significant thicknesses. There's multiple gossans all over multiple kilometers and we've got a lot more work to do to refine those down, but this is a big system, 75 kilometers, gossans up to 80 meters thick, high grades running over that entire 70 kilometers that we've found at very early stages. Once again, early stages but this is a brand-new discovery of a style that is sought by the majors in a jurisdiction that is welcoming to the majors.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't help but notice that you have planned a multi-team exploration program, pretty aggressive field exploration. Can we talk about that, when that will commence?

Michael Hudson: The rainy season finishes at the end of April essentially. So we've had a team there on the ground just over the last few weeks doing some reconnaissance and starting to plan for that. But because this is a much easier exercise to prospect the creeks first, to find these boulders of copper that are shedding from the hills around the creeks, we need those to be somewhat dry and the rains to hold off. So come late April, May right through until August, September is the optimal time, and so we're going to have lots of geologists, probably four teams. We're working on that now. So four geologists and sampling teams and, importantly, community access teams to discuss with the locals what we're doing and make sure that we're earning that social license as we're going ahead of our work to do it first.

Prospecting is pretty cheap but very effective in terms of just really nailing down what we're going to have and when. Our challenge is to find the thickest and highest grade parts of this system. It's 75 kilometers long but there's multiple horizons, so literally there's hundreds of kilometers of strike that is shedding into these rivers within our application areas.

Gerardo Del Real: There's many people that believe that Peru is next on the list for a discovery boom. I've heard whispers of other companies that likely have made recent discoveries, nothing validated or verified, but the next couple of weeks I think will be telling. So exciting stuff to kind of have the first mover advantage that you have.

I've got to ask about Ireland, Mike. Can you update shareholders on that front because I've also heard whispers of interest in the project there?

Michael Hudson: We've got a great project there and up until very recently zinc had lost its luster, but it's desperately seeking zinc again in the space. Zinc is at 18-month highs and inventories are down and it's putting more focus back on the zinc space. I think you can see it, a number of the zinc companies have bottomed now and we just drilled a very encouraging hole based on our seismics work and the millions of dollars that we've spent there looking for the big one and we just need to fund that further to drill further down there. But that had all the right ingredients and that's outboard from an initial resource of 4.5 or 5 million tonnes, which is sort of a half to a third of the way to being economic.

But we're really looking for the big one and there's some great information on our PowerPoint on our website, just in terms of the analogs and the scale and what we're seeing there. We'll come up with a little bit more information. We've still got some assays to report from that drill hole. As we said, there was no visible lead and zinc but what we're hoping to see is vectors and anomalism and seeing the 95, 97-percentile anomalism, which is really important to vector into that system.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, exploration is a process. You're off to a great start with the resource in place in Ireland. You have Peru now, diversifying jurisdictions and commodity types. That's a lot of shots on goal for a company that has a market cap of approximately $5.2 million Canadian. Mike, anything else that you'd like to add?

Michael Hudson: We're doing what we love and creating value in the engine room of the mining business.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Thank you for your time and thank you for the update, Mike.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.