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

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on Exploring a Basin Scale Copper-Gold-Silver Land Package

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of my personal favorite, copper gold silver play, Hannan Metals, Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you today, sir?

Michael Hudson: I'm fantastic. Thanks, Gerardo, for having me back again.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, it seems like every week you're putting out a news release about new gold copper or copper gold silver, or silver copper gold clusters that are being discovered at Valiente. You just announced a new epithermal gold copper cluster at the project. For those that are not familiar, can you just provide a brief overview of what Valiente is and the scale of this project? Because in reality, it's many, many, many projects in one, and I think when it's all said and done, you're going to have multiple company making discoveries just at Valiente.

Michael Hudson: Well put. It's 150 kilometer long epithermal porphyry belt. That's a relatively new discovery. We made these discoveries during COVID and we've taken a huge land position. We've done a lot of the grassroots exploration over the last year or so, the stream sediments, the regional aeromag surveys, and now we're really starting to hone in on each different area. So now we say we've got 18 different porphyries from the mag data, but now we're starting to hone in and work on each individual one.

So I think now we can see, I haven't got the numbers in front of me, but something like five porphyries that we've done the detailed work on a couple of epithermal projects. And when I say this, these things are kilometers and kilometers long in each individual sense. So we found another one here at Previsto, which is the northern part of the project area. All these porphyry epithermals are Myocene age, which is really rewriting the geological rule book of Peru. And Myocene age deposits are really important because they're the most fertile or one of the most fertile geological epochs or ages, where the mineralization came up through that whole subduction of the Andes, and they shouldn't exist so far east. And we found them, and Previsto was always one of the better areas. We recently got social permissions to go in there and do more detailed work and that we've done.

Gerardo Del Real: Can we talk a bit about those details? Those details are important, right? You're sampling, I think there were 17 soil samples over a 1,200 meter strike and some of the grades that you're getting that was at Previsto East. You have, as you mentioned, Previsto Norte. There's Previsto Central. So again, I think when we talk about the scale and enormity of these multiple projects, it's easy to get lost in the fact that you're finding gold, copper and silver all over the place. I don't know of very many explorers with the market cap anywhere near Hannan Metals market cap that are doing this type of work. And hopefully we want to see some drilling in 2024. And then once we start drilling, from our conversations, you mentioned the potential to drill for five to 10 years just because of the scale and enormity of this project. Can you speak about some of the details and some of the sample work that you've been doing?

Michael Hudson: Yeah, so this press release that we just put out a couple of days ago, focused on Previsto, where we've got three target areas over a five to six, seven kilometer trend. We have basically two porphyry areas and one epithermal area. And I think we really wanted to focus this press release more around that epithermal area, which we call Previsto East. It's very impressive early stage sampling. So we went in there literally only with a month's work, and we've identified this alkalic epithermal target, and as we see it, we have over about 1.2 kilometers, we've taken soil samples that average 0.1 grams gold. Now, that doesn't sound very high in an economic sense, but they're crazily high numbers in soil samples over these kind of systems. And remembering that the substrate that we've been sampling is just thick screed that has shed off the mountains.

So we may be dealing with six to seven meters of rock and rubble, and it's averaging 0.1 grams gold. So it's not directly sampling the mineralization itself. It's a mix of the scree. So it's awfully impressive in that alone.

But then when we have a look at that scree and we see it's full of gossanous, hydrothermal breccias and all the right alteration, and we have this green mineral called roscoelite, which is a vanadium mineral, which is very much typical of these alkalic systems, which can form some of the biggest epithermal bodies worldwide. So we love the style, we love the rocks that we're seeing, and we love the scale. And this is only one smaller part of a much larger area at Previsto, which we actually think is the most prospective area in the whole of Valiente. And we've thought that for some time, and that's not withstanding what we found at the other areas, Belen, et cetera, where we've got some pretty impressive projects. But the style and the grades that we're seeing coming out of Previsto are very impressive.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next, Mike? You clearly are starting to really hone in and prioritize these targets. We know that there's a permit that we are anticipating a hopefully positive permitting decision at San Martin. That of course a part of the joint venture with JOGMEC. But we also know that there's a lot of work being done to advance permit applications at Valiente among others. What's 2024 look like?

Michael Hudson: Well, 2024 really looks like trying to focus and get those drill permits advanced in Peru. And that's probably the only reason we're at these market caps, that people are just waiting for us to advance on those permits. And we've got a multi level strategy, I suppose. We've got that. We're very advanced down the path, like you say at San Martin, and we should hear a result one way or the other on that permitting there soon. And “soon” has a variety of outcomes in Peru at the moment, but I think we're talking weeks to month or months, but not many, many months. So let's see how that one comes out. Christmas may get in the way of things as we're heading towards the end of the year. And then we've got a DIA completed at Valiente, and we're just about to submit that to the authority.

So that's a really important aspect is that we've had literally 20 environmental people from hydro, dust, archeological. We've held public participation workshops with hundreds, literally 150 locals, who are all greatly supportive of what we’re doing. So we've got the social acceptance, we've got all that baseline environmental and archeological work completed, so we're just about to submit that.

And then at Previsto, we're exploring ways perhaps that we can do smaller area drill programs, but with faster permitting. So we're exploring that. That's not the DIA, that's another form of permitting in Peru called FTAs. And so we're just exploring all the optionality. And Previsto East is really interesting because they've just put a new road right along the spine of that soil anomaly, and there's five or six excavators along there. I was only there a month or so ago. And so there's a lot of disturbing work that we can actually utilize as drill platforms, et cetera. So lots of optionality in what we're trying to do, and we're really, really very focused on trying to get drill holes in the ground because these systems deserve them.

Peru deserves to benefit from what potentially here is some huge systems. And Hannan shareholders deserve it too because we've been waiting a long time. So we're really, really pushing for that and working at a variety of levels. The key point is that we have that social acceptance broadly across all these areas, which is the most important point.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times. I will be adding aggressively to my already pretty aggressive position in 2024. Looking forward to an exciting year, Mike. Anything to add to that?

Michael Hudson: Nope, I think that's a great summary. Thanks to you and your listeners, for the support, and we're very well poised going to 2024.

Gerardo Del Real: Have a great, great end to your year, and we'll talk soon, Mike. Thanks again.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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