Categories: Precious Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: Gold Stocks / Copper Stocks

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on Expanding Previsto’s High-Grade Gold Footprint & Unlocking District-Scale Gold-Copper Discovery Potential in Peru

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the executive chairman & CEO of Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) — the very busy Mr. Michael Hudson. I know you’ve been on the road. Is Southern Cross Gold Consolidated your soon-to-be multi-billion-dollar gold baby?

And here we are with Hannan now working in the early stages to get towards that. So congrats on the work with SXGC. I understand you’ve been presenting, and I know that’s got to be exciting, but good to have you on to chat Hannan here for a bit, Mike.

Michael Hudson: Yes, it’s great to be back, Gerardo. We’ve just been across at Diggers & Dealers — the premier gold event in Australia and one of the premier mining conferences in the world. Of course, it was focused on gold at the moment, so let’s talk gold in Peru… an emerging massive discovery.

Gerardo Del Real: Let’s talk about it. You had some news, and the headline reads: Hannan Demonstrates Systematic Expansion of Previsto Gold Footprint. 

I don’t know how many people scan all the way to the bottom of news releases but I really enjoyed figure four on this one: the comparison between Cripple Creek and Previsto. It’s almost eerie how the dimensions and outlines of the mineralization match up. In a great way, it’s a lookalike to my amateur eye.

When I started reading the release, you’re talking about new high-grade gold assay results and extending the mineralization 30 meters east, 400 meters south, and 230 meters southeast — and you know you’ve got the ‘sea of gold’ with pockets of very high-grade material. It’s got to be exciting to see what’s emerging there, Mike.

Michael Hudson: It just continues to get bigger as we start to unravel this discovery. For context — and we speak about this all the time — we made the discovery a number of years ago from just a couple of boulders. It took a while to get in there and get the social license but we’ve really only been on the ground for a year or less doing the detailed work such as soil sampling, IP, and prospecting.

That’s where we’re at today: prospecting to outline the system. We’re still in the guts of it, as we’d say in Australia, just making it larger and larger. The broader anomalism spans four or five kilometers by four or five kilometers but our current focus is on a smaller part — maybe a kilometer by a few hundred meters — where we’ve found the very high grades.

As you’ll recall, outside of this release we trenched 69 meters at 2.5 g/t Au and 25 meters around 5 g/t Au in one zone. We’ve now extended that high-grade area within the broader ‘sea of gold’ that this release covers. 

We also wanted to start demonstrating the scale of the system versus global analogs. This is an alkaline gold system of quartz-tourmaline, potassic-rich host rocks, which tend to form very high-grade systems over very large areas.

That’s what Cripple Creek was. It started with very high-grade underground mines in the 1890s and operates today as a lower-grade heap leach after the higher grades were mined out over the last 130 to 140 years. That’s what we’re seeing here. And as you pointed out, the footprint and scale of our system — less than a year into detailed work — are already comparable to the intrusive complex and gold anomalism at Cripple Creek.

It will continue to get bigger and there’s no doubt about that. Our next challenge is finding more of those very high grades with continuity. Another high-grade pocket would be most exciting now.

Gerardo Del Real: It’s been a phenomenal process to watch from the initial discovery, once you had the social license, to where we are today. The amount of work and discovery in such a short time has been absolutely mind-blowing to me.

The million-dollar question: how is drilling going technically at Belen? Last time we spoke, you were wrapping up the third hole at Vista Alegre and had moved the rig over to Ricardo Herrera, which is a porphyry copper-gold system. How are things coming along? I couldn’t be more excited about the next stage of chasing the system and hopefully hitting those potentially economic grades we’re all looking for.

Michael Hudson: At Belen, where we’re drilling, is about 22 kilometers southwest of Previsto. We’ve got one rig there. We’ve completed three holes at Vista Alegre, and final assays are awaited before we put results out. As you said, that rig was moving last time we spoke, and now it is moved and we’re well into the first hole at Ricardo Herrera.

The first target at Vista Alegre was an epithermal gold target with results pending. The second target, Ricardo Herrera, is a porphyry, so the holes will be much longer; it’s a bigger, lower-grade system by nature. We’re pretty excited. We’ve now got four holes in within 50 kilometers, and none of these targets have ever been drilled before. These systems have been there for 12 to 18 million years, and this is the first time humanity has seen them.

We plan three to four holes into each of the three targets at Belen. Sortilegio remains to be tested in this program. We’ll be drilling all year. We also topped up our treasury with a near-100% warrant conversion, bringing in another C$2.25 million.

We’re well-funded, we’re drilling, and we’re making major discoveries while achieving what we set out to do, which is unraveling these new frontiers in the Andes.

Gerardo Del Real: We chatted a bit off-air, and I think it’s worth noting — and I’ll just ask you the question I already know the answer to — but we’re going to be able to drill year-round for many, many years. Is that accurate?

Michael Hudson: That’s right. It depends exactly where we are but at the moment, in terms of access, it’s relatively simple at Belen. We’ve got nice big accesses very close to roads so there’s nothing stopping us in terms of the weather. As long as we’ve got the easy and good access we have today, we’ll be drilling year-round… and we’re not stopping this year.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Last but not least, how is the permitting coming along at Previsto?

Michael Hudson: Now that we’ve made this discovery, the next stage is to start getting holes into it. We’ve advanced our understanding enough to know exactly where to place holes, and with this big system — which also has higher grades — we’ll obviously target those first. There’s also a porphyry copper zone nearly a kilometer long that’s part of the system, so we can drill both copper and gold targets at Previsto.

We’ve just completed the work for the DIA — the Declaración de Impacto Ambiental — essentially the Environmental Impact Assessment required in Peru for drilling programs. Over the last few months, we’ve had a dozen people on site collecting water, soil, air, and community data to compile a comprehensive permitting document. 

That work is now finished, and we’re writing it up for submission. As we’ve guided all along, we expect to file the application around October this year… so just two months from now. We’re advancing well.

Gerardo Del Real: Look, I was at that copper discovery. There are blue, alien-looking rocks sticking out all over the place vertically and horizontally. I’m glad you touched on the copper aspect of the story because it’s easy to look at Previsto and get caught up — and rightfully so — in the potential for tens of millions of gold ounces. 

But there’s also the very real potential for billions of pounds of copper to go with it, right?

Michael Hudson: Yes, the footprint at surface runs something like 750 meters where we’ve channeled down creeks and have seen 100 to 200 meters at 0.1% to 0.2% copper. You can see oxide copper exposed over hundreds of meters. Of course, in this tropical environment, it’s highly leached.

We need to get holes into it to see what the primary mineralization looks like and whether there’s any supergene enrichment. That copper target stands alone. It was actually the first discovery we reported last year. The gold was only found this year so it’s slightly older and slightly forgotten… so thanks for bringing it up again.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, Mike. Looking forward to those assays and to having you back on soon. Anything to add?

Michael Hudson: All good, Gerardo. Onward and upward for frontier discoveries in the back-arc of one of the most prolific mineralized belts in the world, the Andes.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times! Thanks a lot, Mike.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, mate.

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