Categories: Precious Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: Gold Stocks / Copper Stocks

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on Doubling High-Grade Footprint at Previsto Central, Every Channel Mineralized

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, great to have you back on. How are you doing today?

Michael Hudson: I'm very well. Thanks, Gerardo. Always great to be back talking with you.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, the last time we chatted, we talked about doubling the prospective corridor to 13 kilometers at Previsto, right? And clearly right now, Previsto is the anchor that sustains Hannan's valuation. I think everybody from analysts to your major partners, right, in tech and some of the other larger names involved in the stock are happy and content to hold the stock until we get to the point where Previsto is fully permitted and we can demonstrate exactly the quality, the grade and the scale of the system that you've discovered. That is a legitimate discovery. But the news that you had here on the 4th of May is really, really important. And I wanted to have you on because you're now focusing at least in the last release or two on the high grade footprint. We know it's a sea of gold. You've described it that way. And we've seen very high grade pockets over long widths at Previsto, but you're stepping out from that now.

So the headline reads, Hannan doubles high grade footprint at Previsto Central. Every single channel mineralized. That part is important. So I wanted to have you on. I'm not a geologist. I understand it a bit, but I wanted to get your take on why it's so important that every single channel was mineralized and why focusing now on de-risking the higher grade portions that'll help target the permitting process are critical at this stage.

Michael Hudson: Yeah. So let's step back. We discovered those high grade channels early last year. So it's over a year now. And we then went broader, remember? And the way sort of to think about this is that we're in a dense jungle, a couple of hours walk up a hill. It's very hard to see any... Well, you can't see any rocks, you've got to peel the vegetation away to find anything. And we went broader because we had such a massive big footprint, which still remains literally five by five kilometers. And remembering we've extended that by two to three kilometers to the north just recently also. But we're a little defocused from just looking at the scale of hundreds of meters, I suppose, around that high grade initial discovery. We did take some samples, but we went broader. But then we said, let's go back and start understanding this high grade area as we're starting to think about drill platforms and how to drill it.

And we wanted obviously to get more information and that we've done over the last month or so, and we're still there sampling more. So this is going to get bigger in terms of the area that's sampled and let's see what the results bring as we get more results. But we're certainly staying with that sort of the 250 to 300 meter square area looking around these amazingly high grade results where we've trenched 100 plus meters at grams. And we came back with samples orthogonal or perpendicular or high angles to the initial trench and everything was mineralized surprisingly in a way and we're trenching tens of meters. I think that the 18.7 at two grams was one of the numbers that we sampled across. And we're sampling up to tens and tens of meters, 30, 40 meters east and west of this, and it's just all mineralized.

And we're starting to understand that it's a series of veins. We're starting to understand the controls perhaps more northwest than we'd thought before, which gives us a way to follow the trend. So we've gone back to the detail and surprised ourselves on the upside.

Gerardo Del Real: You alluded to it a little bit, but what comes next? Clearly, the team is still in the field continuing to sample and get a better understanding of the system. And obviously, we're working through the permitting process, which we now anticipate will lead into drilling in the early part of 2027, but what comes next in the meantime?

Michael Hudson: Well, just making this system a lot bigger and this is how discoveries come about. You find little bits and pieces and you pull them all together and our efforts have been brought back to the high grade, which is no surprise that they say gold is where you find it and we're certainly finding it around where there is gold and we're going to continue to make this bigger. And the footprint is open in every direction here and you don't find districts, new districts, this is a new district, with this style of gold sticking out of the ground in the Andes, 100 kilometers or 80 kilometers to the east of some of the world's major mineralized systems. And these are analogs in time and slightly different because they've got the gold and copper, so we call them alkalic systems. And this is just the very start of a massive discovery.

Gerardo Del Real: How important is it, you alluded to it in the release, but that the majority of the potential mineralized body looks to be preserved at depth?

Michael Hudson: Yeah. So these systems are epithermal systems and that means they form very close to the surface. And if you think about places like Yellowstone National Park or New Zealand where you see bubbling mineralization coming to the surface, geysers, and all these hot springs and these things form at surface and then they progress down to the heat source and engine and they're typically gold rich at the surface and they become copper rich as you go deeper into the porphyries. And we're seeing a lot of those near surface mineralization indications. So we haven't lost a lot through erosion is what that means. So we see the gold rich part of the system preserved and then we're also seeing through different topographic areas as we get deeper into the system that we've got large copper porphyry targets over kilometers or kilometer plus distances also. So we're seeing the preservation of a whole mineralized system.

We haven't lost it through erosion and this will be a gold rich body and then below it will be the copper and that's what we're seeing. So there's the dual focus. We're focusing on the gold at the moment and the copper will come later when we start putting more effort into that. But don't forget, this is a gold and copper system.

Gerardo Del Real: Gold's near $4,700. Copper just made new all time highs. I know we're waiting on permitting to play itself out. I suspect the prize will be worth the wait. Anything to add to that, Mike?

Michael Hudson: No, just we're progressing the permitting here that we've just gone through elections in Peru where we just kept our head down while there was a lot of political heat across the whole country and we're back progressing, and you'll see some more news on that shortly. But clearly there has been a delay for us over months to keep this moving and that means we're going to hit the wet season. So drilling and permitting is moving into next year, not this year that we hoped. The wet season is from, say, November to March. You don't really want to take helicopters into rain and fog and all those kind of things. So it's pushing back into next year. So we're working on lots of different ways to keep momentum in this bull market that you just alluded to. So Hannan can have the momentum it deserves while waiting to drill this monster.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to it. Thank you as always for your time, Mike. Looking forward to having you back on. Looking forward to future results as the team gets a better handle and understanding of this higher grade core, at least for now, right, of the system and of the part of the property you've explored, because again, it's worth reminding people as amazing as the results have been, there's a lot of this system and property that hasn't been discovered yet.

Michael Hudson: We're about 1% of the way into it if that, I would say.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, that's incredible. Incredible. All right, Mike, thanks again.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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