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

Libero Copper & Gold (TSX-V: LBC)(OTC: LBCMF) CEO Ian Harris on 14,000 Meter Resource Expansion and Exploration Drill Program

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Libero Copper & Gold, Mr. Ian Harris. Ian, it's great to have you on. How are you today?

Ian Harris: Obviously fairly excited of where we're sitting today, so happy to have this call.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you should be excited. First off, we have gold prices back above the $2,700 level. We have China, which appears to be ready to launch a pretty significant stimulus, a second stimulus here in recent months. And clearly that's bullish for copper. We all know that in the midterm, copper is going to suffer from severe deficits. And you just had news that I think is going to bode well for you, for the company and for shareholders in the future. You announced that you are going to conduct a 14,000-meter drill program at your flagship. Can you speak to that a bit?

Ian Harris: Yeah, and just to be clear, we've already started, drilling has already started on the project. It is quite a large program at 14,000 meters. It's about 50% more drilling than's ever been done on the project before, and I'm in agreement with you. The backdrop in timing could be ideal, right? One of the reasons we're so excited is because so many, I think most people recognized the quality, the asset of Mocoa, right? It's been known for a long time, but people just didn't believe that you could effectively move it forward. So two years of work to get to where we are today in a very politicized, polarized Colombia, which it's not known for, but we still have established such a solid base now that the project's moving forward. So we're super excited and timing couldn’t be better. We still don't see enough projects moving towards the ability to get into production anytime soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Talk about the project, not just the existing resource, but the aggressive approach towards expansion, which I know after waiting such a long time and working so hard behind the scenes, right, has got to be exciting to be able to unlock not just the resource expansion ability there, but the potential for new discoveries.

Ian Harris: Yeah, exactly. So Mocoa is already over 600 million tonnes. It contains over 4 billion pounds of copper. It's a significant resource for your average person. The biggest a mine really can be from the beginning is about 30,000 tonnes per day, right? That's the biggest sack mills, the biggest trucks, and that over 20 years is 200 million tonnes. So even at 600, it's already quite a large project. And when I say that 30,000, obviously some projects get built bigger, but it's just a duplication. It's 30 to 60 to 90 to 120, right? But again, there's such a looming deficit. You also want to have the ability to be able to expand a project, to get it even bigger. That's what the big boys want. That's what everybody needs. They don't want to be building 100 different mines. So really what we're trying to accomplish with this 14,000 meters is demonstrate the upside, demonstrate that this thing could get much larger.

And the work we've done, obviously that's been focused on strengthening ourselves locally, working on our national reputation, generating political will, but at the same time we've been doing geochemistry, geophysics, taking samples, soil samples, defining our model. We see this big footprint of the demagnetized zone and the resource area and of eight additional targets. So included in this, there's different types. There's expanding the resource area, but also trying to test some of these additional targets because if you can discover additional porphyry center on the property, obviously the math gets easier, that you can see easily how this thing could get two or three times bigger. And so that's what we're trying to accomplish. And obviously very excited about the work that's been done over all this time. And now finally going and being able to answer those compelling questions that we've had as we've polished the model off.

Gerardo Del Real: How do you see the drilling program playing out in regards to the assay labs and just kind of turnaround time on that front, right? Obviously after years of all that hard work, everyone's excited to see what you're able to come up with there. How's that looking?

Ian Harris: Sure. And first I want to put the context around why people, I've had people say, why does this project get, why does this company, for the valuation that has that market, why does everybody know of this company? And it's obviously, it's the quality of the asset. They know that it can put out results that even in a bland market, and you could argue that we're still kind of bland in the equity side for the mining side, that it can put out results that gets you into what I call the cool kid club. Right. So you're getting numbers that are going to get intention independent of market. You see that in a very small set of projects, and this project can bat like that. And that's why there's the excitement around it.

Now, what many people, and I think, and I'm looking, we've obviously seen quite an improvement in our share price since announcing that we've started the program based on that excitement. But I think many people are saying, oh yeah, they started drilling. But in three months from now, we'll see the first results because that's the experience in Canada, in some other locations. But our labs are in Colombia and we get turnaround times of two weeks, many times less than two weeks. So we expect to get into a solid news flow of being able to put out drill results in a consistent manner. This is a year round program. We've started the meters and it's basically minimum, we see news flow coming out at least on a monthly basis, and it could be starting soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, it sounds like you and I will be chatting frequently. I can't wait for initial results and subsequent results. Anything to add to that Ian?

Ian Harris: No. This is the over level of excitement, and I've said it and I like saying it again, right, that I'm glad that we can give Mocoa the size program, the work that it deserves. And thankfully, we have a rare experience of advancing large scale copper projects, including myself and Ernie Mast and others within the company. It's an amazing asset. And then the third leg of that is the vision of Frank Giustra, who became the major investor. We joined into the Fiore Group. Having that access to capital and that sponsorship has been critical to give Mocoa what it deserves. And obviously, Frank has a bigger vision. This is his copper play. And we're very excited, just the way everything is working out in terms of timing, and there's still a lot of opportunities out there beyond Mocoa.

Gerardo Del Real: You have the scale, you have the grade, you have the team, and you have the financial backing. It's going to be fun to watch here over the next several months and years. Thank you again so much for your time.

Ian Harris: You too. Thanks.

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