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

Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTCQB: LMSQF) CEO Keith Henderson on Swinging for Home Runs with Major Funded Drill Programs

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Latin Metals, Mr. Keith Henderson. Keith, how are you today?

Keith Henderson: I'm great. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Look, it's great to have you on. Happy New Year. You just had some news that outlined something that a lot of other companies are having trouble with, which is securing a drill permit at 100% owned copper project in Peru. Congratulations there. I know that Latin Metals has a business model that looks to de-risk projects by bringing in joint venture partners to advance the drilling once it's at the drill ready stage. Can you tell me a bit about this project and then let's talk about how you plan on testing this thing?

Keith Henderson: Yes, indeed. Yeah, we're really happy with the drill permit. It will indeed be a very happy new year. I think we're really glad that that worked. We've taken a very, very proactive approach with communities and we've been able to get everybody on side. We've signed community agreements and ultimately, that's led to us having the drill permit. And it really didn't take us that long to get it, so we're really delighted.

The project itself, it's one of several projects we have in Peru. It's one that we staked, which is the cheapest possible way that we can acquire properties and we try to do that in most cases. So we acquired it for almost nothing. It's also worked out to be a really interesting project. Not all projects are successful, but this one has been. Everything we've thrown at it has given us good results, whether that's stream sediment sampling, rock sampling. We've thrown a bunch of geophysics at it and we've come up with all kinds of anomalies.

So it's really panned out to be a good project with really good drill ready targets. And I think this piece, the drill permit, is the piece that probably will be able to secure us a partner and that's how we plan to fund this thing going forward. It's going to require a lot of drilling. As per our usual model, we're going to look for a partner to fund that drilling. And having not just a really good project with good targets, but also a project with an actual drill permit sitting there, that should really, really help us to secure a partner.

Gerardo Del Real: You described the project in the latest release as a potentially intact porphyry copper system with multiple drill ready targets. Tell me about the project. I noticed that the chip channel sampling had defined already mineralization that was pretty consistent, which included 52 meters grading 0.38% copper and molybdenum as well. How optimistic are you when you see that kind of consistency in the mineralization for advancing that target?

Keith Henderson: We absolutely love to see that. It's interesting. A lot of people will give you a decent intersection like that from their surface sampling, and often what people are not telling you is that there's all kinds of unmineralized rock and then there's a couple of samples that are kind of high grade and it gives you a great average. The old smearing trick that we see from time to time. What we like about the intersections that we put out last year is that all of them are completely consistent. So that means if we've got 50 or 60 or 70 samples each being two meters in length, every single sample is anomalous and we've got nothing in there that's kind of unmineralized or empty. So there really is consistent disseminated mineralization on a sample by sample basis over those really thick intersections. And that's great. It's a really good starting point.

What it tells us is this thing needs to get drilled and we want to know what's going to happen to that grade when we get to depth. And that's where the geophysics comes in. And what we like about the geophysics is that it seems to point to peak chargeability at a depth of about 100 meters. And we hope that what that really means is that we're going to have way more sulfide and way more grade as we get deeper. So the already very good intersections at surface we hope are going to be a little bit better as we get deeper, which, of course, that's why we need to get this thing drilled. We need to know just what that looks like and we think that's going to be a compelling story for anybody that's looking at partnering with us.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned in the release that you'll continue to negotiate with potential partners. I'm assuming when you say partners in the plural, that there's several discussions going on and that this is probably a sooner rather than later kind of endeavor as far as securing a partner.

Keith Henderson: Yes. I would imagine it'll take us probably two or three months to get to an actual commercial agreement with someone. And from there, it does take a while to get agreements in place, as you probably know. But I hope that getting into Q3 this year that we've actually got a partner and someone's actually getting ready to start working on this. And with the drill permit in place, there's no impediments to getting started. We're always talking to lots of people. I guess that's not a secret. And we've been speaking to some people as we've been moving through this permitting process, and now with the permit in place, I think that's the last piece. And so yeah, we'll certainly be aiming to close something off and get a partner in place ASAP.

Gerardo Del Real: Latin Metals will see multiple partner funded projects being drilled this year. Can just, before I let you go, give us a brief overview of what to expect here in 2023? Because there's no shortage of catalysts for investors and speculators that are looking for a de-risked model that allows you exposure to copper, to gold, to silver, and some of these commodities that are off to a phenomenal 2023.

Keith Henderson: Yeah. We've got three projects that we think are going to be drilled and we think those are going to be starting to get drilled in Q2. I'll just run through them quickly. The first one is Esperanza, which is our copper-gold discovery. That's a project that back in 2018 returned the third best drill intersection in the world in the copper space. There was almost 400 meters at 0.57% copper and 0.27 grams gold. That's a hell of an intersection from surface. And so when Libero Copper get around to drilling that this year, that's just going to be a process of trying to expand on that excellent intersection that already exists. So it's certainly exploration, but having that key intersection in there really makes a difference and really de-risks the project.

We've got Barrick in the south in Santa Cruz who we hope are going to be drilling in Q2 at our Cerro Bayo project. And then also in the north of the country we've got AngloGold Ashanti, who we hope are going to be drilling our Organullo Project also starting in Q2. So all of these things, the timelines are good for us. We hope that this is going to get really exciting really quickly here. All of these things are obviously subject to completion of drill permits, but I don't see any major impediments to getting those done and I hope that those projects get started on time and we see what happens.

Gerardo Del Real: Swinging for home runs with majors funding the swing is always, always a wise and prudent course in these markets. Keith, always a pleasure to catch up. I suspect you and I will be chatting very frequently here in 2023.

Keith Henderson: Sounds good. Look forward to it. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.

Gerardo Del Real: Thanks for the update.

Keith Henderson: Cheers.

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