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

Pacific Opportunity Capital President Mark Brown on his Firm's Work with Avrupa Minerals and Alianza Resources

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is President of Pacific Opportunity Capital, Mr. Mark Brown. Mark, how are you this afternoon?

Mark Brown: I'm great, Gerardo. How you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I'm doing very well. Thank you so much for asking. Now, Mark, you do work for a company Avrupa Minerals (TSX-V: AVU)(OTC: AVPMF). You're actually on the board of directors, if I'm not mistaken, and they had a pretty important news release this morning regarding the Alvalade project in Portugal. Can we talk about that a bit?

Mark Brown: Yeah, it's great news for us. We're a big shareholder of this company. We're really supporting it. And this project in Southern Portugal, you got to remember Southern Portugal's known for very, very large mines. There's the Neves-Corvo mine there, owned by Lundin Mining, and we're about 60 km away from there with this project. So we've been working on it for about the past five years, funded all by partners. They've spent over $7 million dollars on it US, and we made discoveries on it over 1.8 kilometers long strike length, and great grades of copper, lead, zinc.

But our last most recent partner has been financially in trouble as a hangover from the downturn a while ago with the base metals, which are obviously a lot better now, and we did a workout agreement to get them out, so we own 100% of the project again, and it's all back in our hands, which is fantastic, and we have lots of options as to what we can do with it in the future.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now you mentioned, you've had discoveries on this property. I mean, some of the better intercepts include one of 10.85 meters at 1.81% copper, 1.5 meters at 1.66% copper, 5 meters of 0.64% copper, so this is an advanced exploration property that I imagine has got to get the attention of some pretty intriguing partners.

Mark Brown: That's right. I mean, at Neves-Corvo, they produce a copper and a zinc concentrate, and then they have byproducts of lead, silver and gold.

Gerardo Del Real: Right.

Mark Brown: So these are polymetallic, right? That's the way these things develop. I mean, in addition to those copper grades, we hit 4% zinc and 5% zinc and 2% lead regularly over these different intercepts. So the grades are really good, but when Antofagasta was our partner on this, Gerardo, it was a different style from having a junior drill, let's just say. We drilled a hole and we hit the first mineralization, fantastic, we were all excited, and they wanted us to drill 800 meters away. So that's a pretty big step-out hole. I don't think you call it a step-out hole. It's really just a brand new exploration target.

So anyway, we hit, we did hit 800 meters away amazingly enough, not in every hole, but we've hit these potential lenses over this 1.8 kilometers, which tells you, you're into elephant territory, and this thing has the potential to be very, very big, and the grades are different ranges, and we've got a heck of a lot more work to do. So one of the options for us is to get a new partner in, but we're going to be really focused on getting somebody to come in that wants to do a very, very large drill program here. Our market cap is only about $7.5 million Canadian, and we're going to be looking for somebody to spend way more than that on drilling on this in the next couple years here to try and get to the resource stage.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, now Avrupa, of course, is a prospect generator. Can we talk a bit about the other projects, and maybe some near to midterm catalysts on that front?

Mark Brown: Sure. Also in Portugal, we just started work on a project fully funded by a company from Australia called Oz Minerals, O-Z Minerals, and they're funding about half a million dollars of a geophysical program right now on a very large project that we have called Alvito, and that is an iron oxide copper-gold target. If you know anything about those type of copper-gold projects, they're generally very, very large.

Gerardo Del Real: Right.

Mark Brown: They're very rare, but if you find one, and we've got good indications of it, you get decent grade copper, lead, zinc and also a lot of other mineral byproducts as well. So we hope to get that program done over the summer, and then be drilling on that in the fall.

So then switching over to Kosovo, one of our other projects, we've got our gold project there. There's a big drill program going on right now, again fully funded by our partner there. We expect to get diluted to a 2% royalty there, but we don't have to spend anything, and they're actually spending about $8 million dollars. It'll take a year and a half or so to spend that, but on a very large drill program there right now.

So it's amazing to me. Our market cap is so low compared to the amount of dollars being spent on our projects and the fact we just got back one project that has had $7 million spent on it already. So anyway, you can add up those numbers, and it's a heck of a lot bigger than our market cap.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Now, Mark, I know you do some work for a lot of different companies. I know you're selective, but you do work for a lot of different companies. Can you talk about some other companies out there that are interesting to you right now?

Mark Brown: Sure, yeah. Alianza (TSX-V: ANZ)(OTC: TARSF) is our other prospect generator in North & South America, and that's another one, both Alianza and Avrupa, our funds owns about 15% of each of those companies, and we arrange the financings and participate in the financings all the time, but we also work with other companies like Adamera Minerals (TSX:V: ADZ)(OTC: DDNFF), which is doing a drill program on a project in Washington State right now. Redstar Gold (TSX-V: RGC)(OTC: RGCTF), another company with a really good gold project up in Alaska. They're also drilling right now.

So we're very active. We back these companies with good administration and let the CEOs really focus on adding value for the shareholders, and we try not to charge them too much, because we always want to be a potential shareholder of these things, and we understand that you're going to make the real money by being a significant shareholder in these companies.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'm familiar with the group and the work that you do, Mark. I love that you take a mid to long-term approach to letting the discovery process play out. How can people get in touch with you if they want to talk with you, Mark?

Mark Brown: Oh, they can email us or get us on the phone any time. All the information's on the websites there. If you go to avrupaminerals.com, everything is there, and they can call us any time here in Vancouver. Do you want me to give you the phone number?

Gerardo Del Real: Sure, absolutely.

Mark Brown: 604-687-3520.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I believe the website is pacificopportunity.com, is that correct?

Mark Brown: That's correct. Yeah, that's the private one. The better ones that are more up to date are the alianzaminerals.com and avrupaminerals.com.

Gerardo Del Real: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Mark. Hopefully we can have you back on soon. I know you're expecting news from Avrupa here within the next couple of months. Obviously a lot of irons in the fire there, and keep us posted with Alianza and some of the other companies you're involved with.

Mark Brown: Excellent. Thanks so much, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, Mark.