The Next Billion-Dollar Resource Company

Editor’s Note: Bravo Mining Corp. (TSX-V: BRVO)(OTC: BRVMF) is a Canada and Brazil-based mineral exploration and development company focused on advancing its 100% owned Luanga PGM+Au+Ni Project in the world-class Carajás Mineral Province of Brazil. The Luanga Project benefits from being in a location close to operating mines, with excellent access and proximity to existing infrastructure, including road, rail and clean and renewable hydro grid power.

Bravo has access to over 50km of historic drill core from 252 diamond holes covering a deposit strike of +8km and what appears to be a new, high-grade nickel/copper massive sulphide discovery that could be a game changer for what was already a compelling value.

Bravo was founded by a management team and board with extensive Brazilian and international exploration (including PGM), permitting, project financing, construction, operating and capital markets experience.

I was able to sit down with Executive Chairman and CEO Luis Azevedo to talk about his history of success monetizing assets at significant premiums and why this may be the next multi-billion dollar asset.

It comes at a time when platinum, gold, nickel, and copper prices are all moving higher. 

Enjoy, 
Gerardo


The Next Billion-Dollar Resource Company

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the executive chairman & CEO of one of my top personal holdings, Bravo Mining (TSX-V: BRVO)(OTC: BRVMF) — Mr. Luis Azevedo. Luis, it's a pleasure to have you on. How are you today, sir?

Luis Azevedo: A pleasure as well, Gerardo. Nice to talk to you!

Gerardo Del Real: Well listen, 2023 is off to a great start for Bravo and the Luanga Project. It's a top tier-one project that I believe has the potential to return multiples of where it trades today. And so I want to get into the project and the location and why you believe it's one of the most attractive projects you've been involved with. 

But I want to start by introducing some of your past successes. Can you tell us a bit about your background because it's a very interesting one?

Luis Azevedo: Well, Gerardo, I'm a geologist who later became a lawyer, and what I've been doing my entire life is essentially assisting companies and forming new ventures. I was responsible for about 13 assets that became junior companies in the market. One of my past successes was a fertilizer company called Rio Verde Minerals, which I listed on the TSX in 2012. A year later, it was bought out at a 50% premium by a Brazilian group — B&A Mineração SA. 

After that, I dedicated myself to a copper project, which I founded in 2008 as Avanco Resources. We threw a lot at this project including drilling. We basically came to the conclusion that it was a very good copper asset. In just one year, we were able to build a plant with a one million tonne capacity. Then, just two years later, we were acquired at a 120% premium by Oz Minerals for AUS$440 million; a mark that has yet to be beaten in Brazil to this day.

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Gerardo Del Real: Very, very impressive! You have a world-class management team. Let's talk about Luanga. It is a palladium, platinum, rhodium, gold, plus nickel project. And now, you're onto what I think is going to be a game-changing high-grade nickel-copper massive sulfide discovery. 

Tell us a bit about Luanga and why you are so excited about it. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Luis, you own roughly 60% of existing shares. Is that accurate?

Luis Azevedo: 52%.

Gerardo Del Real: Okay, 52%.

Luis Azevedo: Ten percent belongs to the board, which essentially came about after I’d called up all of my critical guys. I call them critical because they truly are… they’ll be key to our overall success. And that’s why I am so excited about Luanga. 

And the way it came about… Vale had the project for about twenty years as part of their previous precious metals department. A lot of the assets from that prior department went to Yamana, which has helped that company grow into the multi-billion dollar mining firm it is today. 

We, of course, were able to acquire Luanga. And what I was so excited about when I was first introduced to the project is its size and grade. We’re talking about 8.1 km of mineralized strike! Look, I've visited Chile’s giant porphyry copper mines — and they’re around 4 km in strike. Same goes for Australia’s world-class gold deposits — they average around 5 km of strike. 

Luanga is nearly twice that at 8.1 km… and the entire strike length has been proven to contain mineralization.  

On top of that, Vale — in all of the time they had the project — considered Luanga to be primarily a platinum-palladium deposit. They literally had no idea how much nickel sulfide they were sitting on. They also never properly tested for rhodium in their assaying approach so the rhodium was never included in any of their resource calculations.  

Vale presented the project to me as a 140 million tonne asset with palladium, platinum, and nickel contained. But we are seeing much greater potential for nickel sulfides at depth. And as noted, they really didn’t test properly for rhodium… so the project is wide open in terms of its resource potential.

Gerardo Del Real: Bravo is very well-funded… and part of why you are very well-funded has been your ability to raise capital to the tune of over C$40 million during one of the toughest consolidations in the resource space. 

Luis, what comes next for Luanga and for Bravo… how are you allocating that capital? And what can shareholders that want exposure to an asset that, I think, eventually will be worth… not the C$220 million it's worth today… but I believe it's going to be a multi-billion dollar valuation when it's all said and done… what comes next and how do you unlock that value, Luis?

Luis Azevedo: Look, for a project of this size, you need a great team in place to be able to understand the complex geology and, as well, to prioritize drill targets from so many mineralized zones. So my first order of business was putting together a Class-A team at Bravo. 

And to accomplish that, I’ve brought in people with vast in-country experience like Simon Mottram, who leads the Luanga Project as president of Bravo. For my VP of exploration, I’ve brought in Paulo De Brito, whom I’ve worked with before and who has 40 years of experience working on these types of polymetallic deposits throughout Brazil. My VP of technical services is Heinrich Muller, who hails from South Africa but is in the process of relocating to Brazil to focus on Luanga. He’s worked on PGM deposits his entire career. 

When we acquired the Luanga Project from Vale, we also received data from 250 Vale holes that only went down about 150 meters. Our team has now drilled around 140 holes, and our plan is to complete what we are referring to as Phase-1, which will be infill drilling at 100-meter spacing with about 20 more holes left to go. We’re currently focused on the North and Central Zones, which we found richer than the South Zone. We expect those forthcoming results to provide us with a very good understanding of the geology in that area. 

In Phase-2, we’ll be reducing our drill spacing to 50 meters with some deeper drilling well below 150 meters. There’s nothing we’ve seen so far that tells us this deposit doesn’t go deeper. So in this upcoming phase, we’ll be conducting deeper drilling in that 150 to 300 meter range. 

In terms of assays, we are awaiting results from eight holes that are currently at the lab being processed. So we’ll be releasing those as they come in. And our news flow won’t stop there. We plan on having lots of results from our Phase-2 drill program, which we expect to commence in April of this year. 

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Gerardo Del Real: Luis, with your background, your experience, your contacts in Brazil… what do you see for this project, and what’s the end game so to speak? As we talked about, you own roughly 50% with the board owning around another 10%. What do you see as the end game for Luanga and for Bravo mining?

Luis Azevedo: The main goals here are to increase the resource, get the project permitted, and derisk the project in terms of methodological engineering. And when the market is ready, we're going to be building this project out. That's our goal. I'm a builder. I've been a part of companies that have built mines before. And, in fact, I’ve already built two myself; a fertilizer project and a copper project. It’s what I’m good at! 

Gerardo, we have a very uniquely experienced board in place at Bravo that believes in me and has trust and confidence in me — and vice versa. Between just two of our board members — Stuart Comline and Tony Polglase — we’re talking about a billion dollars in previous project sales combined. Stuart was responsible for the Akanani PGM project at AfriOre, which sold 15 years ago for C$444 million. And Tony, alongside myself, have had sales of that magnitude as well. 

So we know what we have at Luanga. The value is certainly there. And I don’t think it’s going to be too long before we’re able to prove to the market what we have below surface at Luanga. 

Ever since our IPO, the market has shown recognition for what we have going on. We’ve seen our share price increase by 30% in one of the worst resource markets I’ve ever experienced. And we’re looking forward to executing and capitalizing on what we fully expect will be a far better market in 2023. 

Gerardo Del Real: Luis, I couldn't agree with you more. You have the team, you have the project, you have the exploration upside, you have the infrastructure — and you're onto a new discovery at Luanga that we'll go more in-depth on next time. I want to thank you so much for your time. Anything else to add to that, sir?

Luis Azevedo: No, thank you very much, Gerardo. Looking forward to upcoming conversations with you about new developments at Luanga. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we’ll be chatting… especially with the amount of exciting news flow we’re anticipating. 

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to it! Thank you so much, Luis. 

Luis Azevedo: Thank you, Gerardo.


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Gerardo Del Real

Gerardo Del Real
Editor, Resource Stock Digest