Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Vizsla Copper (TSX-V: VCU)(OTC: VCUFF) CEO Chris Donaldson on Preparing for a Major Bull Market in Copper

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Vizsla Copper. Mr. Chris Donaldson. Chris, happy New Year. It's great to catch up. How are you, sir?

Chris Donaldson: Happy New Year. I'm doing great. What a difference a couple of months makes in the sentiment out there. So definitely energized and ready to get rolling here for '23.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, let's get right into it. I think 2023 is going to be a barn burner of a year in the gold space, in the copper space, in the lithium space, the graphite space. I think we are really in for a really, really profitable 2023.

And so hence me reaching out when I saw the news that you just completed the airborne magnetic survey at the Woodjam Copper project, copper of course kissed $4.20 here yesterday and looks to be holding really, really well that $4.12, $4.13, $4.15 level.

I wanted to get your thoughts on this high-definition aeromagnetic survey because, the way that I understand it, it's the first of its kind on this property. Is that accurate?

Chris Donaldson: Not the first, but definitely more complete. And we expanded over an area.

Taking a step back, if you remember, we finished our merger, I should say, with Consolidated Woodjam just at the end of last year. Took about a year to finally get done. So we've been just chomping at the bit to get working on the property. But now that we've got it under control under VCU, we're able to start working the properties.

We ran the MAG survey, which is really just the first step for us. The property itself, it's got a historic resource on it. There's kind of four key areas. It's a porphyry cluster that we've got there. We've had in the past some really, really strong intercepts there, including 110 meters at two and a half grams gold and just under half a percent copper.

So we've got these known areas, but we also have a lot of areas that haven't been tested, with 70% of the property has not seen much exploration. We believe that these porphyry occur in clusters, we've found four of them.

The purpose of the MAG survey was to look for lookalike targets across the property here. We're really setting ourselves up for a drilling program that'll happen in the spring, certainly before summer, but it's good for a start. And we're waiting, we're just kind of interpreting the data that we got now and hopefully we'll get some prime targets out of it.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, excellent. And just to be clear, this is the first survey that Vizsla has conducted on the property, correct?

Chris Donaldson: Yeah. And this is our first bit of work. And if you go back, so the property's been around for a while and got quite a bit of attention up until about 2013. So Gold Fields came in, they put about $30 million into exploration and so on, and pumped out the historical resource. So we've got a good base to start from.

But what happened over the last kind of 10 years is there's been a little bit of work on it every year, Woodjam, I wouldn't say the bare minimum, but very little exploration. We're now taking all that and breathing new life into it and we've got a good team and some cash behind us to really get us back out there.

So this is first step and then really looking forward to start drilling and getting back out there and with some good results.

Gerardo Del Real: Beautiful. We've seen momentum in the stock clearly. Give me your thoughts on copper. I'm very, very bullish on copper, but I got to get your thoughts on it. I would imagine you share a similar sentiment.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, so I mean it's exciting for me. So if you remember for 10 years I was working for a company called Western Copper and Gold, and we were talking about this pending copper crunch that was coming for years and years and I had the same graph and almost every copper company has it, and I still have it. And it shows a gap of about 8 million tonnes that's going to be needed by 2030, which is seven years away.

But that gap has already started. We're seeing record low LME levels right now, and that's now finally reflecting in the price. The all-time high, I think, was just under five bucks. And I think we're going to blow through that over the next year or two and going forward and hit some all-time highs. So the timing is really great in the space.

It's unusual though, on the copper. Historically, it's been called Doctor Copper. The economy's going well, copper goes up, it goes poorly and it goes down. But those fundamentals seem to have changed a bit because when these recessions happen, big infrastructure projects are coming online and those need a lot of copper. And we're also seeing just an absolute revolution in the way copper is being used in as the world electrifies. And so that is kind of disrupted that Doctor Copper thesis. And I think we're on in for a heck of a ride here over the next five, 10 years.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't agree with you more. I suspect you and I will be chatting frequently this year. Good to have you back on and hopefully we're chatting soon.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Appreciate it, Chris.

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