Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTC: LMSQF) CEO Keith Henderson on New Accretive Copper Property Acquisition with Multiple Porphyry Centers in Peru

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Latin Metals — Mr. Keith Henderson… the ever busy Mr. Keith Henderson. How are you today, Keith?

Keith Henderson: I'm great, thanks.

Gerardo Del Real: Well listen, you just had some news out here this week. You discovered some new copper-porphyry centers and skarn mineralization at one of your projects in Peru. 

Of course, the business model for Latin Metals is to acquire projects at shareholder-friendly prices, high-quality projects, advance them to the point where you can bring in a partner, preferably a partner that has deep pockets. And then, essentially get, not just the technical expertise of those partners but real capital in hopes of finding a discovery that Latin Metals shareholders can benefit from. 

And so you're at it again with this project in Peru. Can you tell me a bit about the work that's gone into this?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, sure. It's a project we've staked, like everything that we have in Peru — so we own it 100%. It was pretty cheap to acquire; a matter of a few thousand dollars… so that ticks all the boxes. 

And then, it’s a matter of getting on the ground to see what we have. We always take the first initial steps of making community agreements. And we did that some time ago with this project, and we've been working there for a while. That process of getting the community on board means that when you eventually go looking for a drill permit, you tend to have an easier time. You're already in a real conversation and you're already having a real relationship with the community.

So the work itself has gone on. We've done a bunch of rock sampling, soil sampling. It's all been geochemistry focused so far, looking at what's at surface. Last year, we announced that we'd found a pretty significant porphyry signature over about 1.5 x 1.5 km. That was a great result for us, and it’s made us very, very, very interested in the project. 

But now, we've been back and looked at other parts of the project and we’ve found a couple more mineralized centers; another porphyry center. And brand new for us is a skarn mineralization center as well. So we've got a little bit of copper; we've got a little bit of other base metals. We've got lots going on this project. And we're starting to think about scale. 

Once you start to see multiple centers of mineralization sitting, kind of, distinctly from one another and still so much of the project to explore, you start to really think about scale. And scale is what gets us the interest from bigger companies, ultimately.

Gerardo Del Real: Now, to prove up some more of that potential scale, you're waiting for the results of a ground magnetic survey, correct?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, we did that about a month-and-a-half ago. We're just processing the data right now so we should have that finalized in the next couple of weeks and get that out to shareholders for a look as well. 

That will really help us to focus the remainder of our work there; help us to define drill targets. And that's, ultimately, I think, what gets everybody interested. So we hope that in due course here that the data that we're collecting will be enough, probably, to get us talking to some of the other mid-tier and major mining companies. 

This project, actually, is sitting contiguous right beside a project owned by Vale, and, to the south, also a project owned by Newmont as well. And that's just to speak to the fact that there are big companies operating in this exact area. 

This is an area that's seen as having potential, and we've got a really nice big property in here with three mineralized centers. So hopefully we can develop an audience for what we're doing and get a deal done later this year.

Gerardo Del Real: How are things elsewhere in the portfolio? I know you're busy in Peru but you're also very busy in Argentina, which has become just a hotbed of mining activity. And it has attracted a lot of capital and for good reason. 

Look, there's been some major discoveries and some big projects with scale that are being advanced out there. How are things coming along there?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, the money going into Argentina is just unbelievable. Like BHP's $100 million investment last year in Filo del Sol, one of the Lundin Group companies. NGEx, also a Lundin company, made a discovery and announced it yesterday or the day before. So there's lots and lots going on on the copper side.

We've been looking at something a little bit different in Argentina; a new idea. We think there's potential for sedimentary-hosted copper similar to the kinds of deposits that you see in Central Africa and in Europe as well. It's something that really nobody's looked at in a serious way here in Argentina. 

And so that opened up a big opportunity for us because once we became convinced that the potential was real, we went to look for property that we can stake and we find that there was no property in this area staked at all. And really, nobody's thought about it; nobody's acquired anything. 

So we were able to accumulate a very large land position extremely cheaply. We've been on the ground. We've had proof of concept sampling that picked up actual mineralization of the exact type that we were looking for. I think the grade in that sample is about 2.5% - 2.4% copper.

And now, we go on to the next steps. The next step for this project is to do a very, very extensive drainage, stream sediment sample survey. We'll get that done over the next couple of months. We'll get the results out, and then we'll be able to start to understand what the potential of this very large land position is. So that's really going to be a big focus for us over the next few months.

Gerardo Del Real: You have, potentially, at least two, and I believe three, if I recall correctly, potential drill programs this year. You have to be excited about seeing partner-funded exploration with the drill bit at multiple projects this year.

Keith Henderson: Yeah, we're hoping to see drilling in Organullo with AngloGold Ashanti. We're hoping to see drilling in Cerro Bayo in Santa Cruz province with Barrick. And we're also hoping to see drilling in San Juan at our Esperanza copper-porphyry project with Libero Copper & Gold. 

So all three of those projects are moving towards drill targets. We hope that all three of them will drill before the year is out, and that's hugely exciting for us. That's going to be really large expenditures coming in from our partners; hopefully good drill tests that turn into real discoveries. But we have to keep our fingers crossed for those kinds of things.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to drills turning, looking forward to the batch of news that you have coming up, and looking forward to chatting again, Keith. It sounds like we'll be doing it often.

Keith Henderson: Great, super… thanks a million.

Gerardo Del Real: Always a pleasure. Thank you.

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