Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Palamina Corp. (TSX-V: PA) President Andrew Thomson on the Company’s Multiple District-Scale Land Packages in the Puno Orogenic Gold Belt in Peru

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is President of Palamina Corp. (TSX-V: PA)(OTC: PLMNF), Mr. Andrew Thomson. Andrew, how are you this morning?

Andrew Thomson: Very good. I am in sunny Vancouver at the Sprott Conference. It is fairly well attended and I'm happy to report that even with today's gold price we're seeing some momentum here. 

Gerardo Del Real: You beat me to my question. I was going to ask you what's the energy like there.

Andrew Thomson: Well, surprisingly they're actually pretty positive. I would say copper is the leader, then gold, and then the battery metals – they haven't taken a back seat, it's just a more reserved crowd. There's still a bit of, I wouldn't say a lack of optimism, but there is a bit of caution out there. But you know these are a lot of people with money walking around. So, I would say that we're at a pause as opposed to a downturn and I'm not calling the low but I do think we are in the middle of summer and it's actually fairly well attended and there is a fair amount of action for a summer conference. 

Gerardo Del Real: Well, it sounds like good signs of a bottoming market. You've been busy and, frankly, you've been busy all year, Andrew. There was news on July the 5th and there was news yesterday that I want to touch on. You've been busy increasing your land position at multiple district-scale gold properties in Peru that you've managed to put together. So, before we get to the news talking about the new discovery at one of the districts, I'd like for you to provide a brief overview about what your approach is with these massive land packages that you're putting together.

Andrew Thomson: Yeah, effectively the company really started for all intents and purposes in July of 2017 and we're 18 months into an acquisition phase where we've tied up in the Puno Belt – it's an orogenic gold belt and we think a significant belt due to the amount of informal workers in the belt – we've tied up just over 77,000 hectares. The property positions, which average say 15,000 hectares a piece or a little more, we visited them all and we've carried out multiple campaigns on three of them, one of which is Coasa, the latest results coming up. But really we're now starting to get into what we call systematic exploration.

So, where some of the majors and some of the more active juniors have looked at all these areas previously, we’re now starting what I call follow-up systematic exploration based on any historical data we could find. But you know the salient point here is we're going to be the first to fly the belt and there's no drill holes in any of these and they sit on strike. You know there's some fairly exciting gold values and we've made certain discoveries of late so we'll talk about those in this interview. 

Gerardo Del Real: You know, let’s get right to it. Let's talk about the Coasa Gold Project in south-eastern Peru. It's got some pretty impressive numbers, you had some grab samples that reached a high of 39.2 grams per tonne gold within a 7-meter long chip sample that also returned a grade of 4.2 grams per tonne gold.

Andrew Thomson: Yes.

Gerardo Del Real: Can you tell me about the width of the anomalous gold zone and what you're doing to follow that up?

Andrew Thomson: At Coasa the focus has been to initially, there's a what we call the Phusca trend, and there's a deposit there, Crucero, that GoldMining recently purchased from Lupaka. There's both an east-west trend and this Phusca trend that come together, and again, our team has 35 years of experience in this belt and to find Ollachea which also occurs at the same elevation, about 60 kilometers west, and is very similar to Ollachea. So when we stake this it is with an understanding that we have a team that did 81 kilometers of drilling, that understands the mineralogy and we see very similar occurrences. So, within the Phusca trend we started to identify, there's some historical workings in the east-west trend that we were interested in so we started to look on our ground. There's a little 200-hectare block there. We again control a very large position. And so we started to look at this Veta area and we started to find, in our first round we got 1 to 3 gram assays and it was really a quick pass looking at about three different areas on the property. We're now up to quite a few anomalous zones, 9 zones on the property and this is now the high-priority zone.

Chip sampling is basically where you chip along. So the the 7-meter chip sample of 4.2, we chipped along a vein and it averaged 4.2 grams. That area that we're looking at we're now going back and doing channel sampling across it, and we also got again the high of 39.2 grams. But more importantly, we're also finding visible gold in an area the Incas, the Spaniards, nobody has found before where it is open at surface. And again there is a million ounce gold deposit in the trend and this is coming off of a very large area. So, we've got quite a few 3 gram assays so you know at the end of the day it could be, you know, we're looking at it having outside potential at surface. We know the mineralogy because of Ollachea, but it's really early days, but it's about as good as it gets in terms of getting close to 40 gram per tonne gold assays, visible gold, and fairly significant values over a large area.

So, we're pretty excited about it and then in the Phusca zone there's just really remarkably nice looking geology. Again at Ollachea it was about a gram per tonne at surface and they drilled it because of the geology. We're seeing similar attributes, and again our team has a bit of proprietary knowledge in terms of the mineralogy so we know what to look for. So we're not saying very much about it because we're keeping it to ourselves but at the end of the day everything is lining up the way it should, and we're pretty excited. So to that end we started environmental and drill permitting and so all that is being put into place to be able to carry out a drill program.

Gerardo Del Real: What does the timeline look moving forward as far as advancing the project, Andrew?

Andrew Thomson: Well, as you know, the other thing that we're doing is we're just starting an airborne geophysical survey. And we're covering most of the Coasa property, 125 meter spacings. So the guys are in the field now doing channel sampling to sort of determine the width of these vein systems that we have found to try and get an idea of tonnage potential, and then we're also flying it. So, within a month we're going to have a very good picture. We're actually doing a 43-101 on the property to include all that data. So it will be our first 43-101. Again it's not with a view to resource, it’s just with a view to this is a flagship property and having a technical report that is up to par so that people can really get into the heart of it. But again our first campaigns have been very successful.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. So with this being the flagship, you have multiple district-scale land packages. I imagine that there is probably discussions going on to maybe joint venture some of those. Would that be accurate?

Andrew Thomson: We've been contacted by numerous major companies and we are doing property tours. We're being a little bit cautious because it is early days, but at the same time it's that sort of market where you want to keep all of those things as discussions depending on where the market goes. But, I think really what people are intrigued by is the fact that there is no drilling that has been done on these properties and the results that we're seeing, it's actually fairly exciting. 

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting stuff Andrew. What's the market cap look like?

Andrew Thomson: We're trading at about $0.35. So you know, in Canadian dollars it's in the $10 to $12 million range depending on where it trades. We think we're pretty reasonably priced, we've got just over a million dollars in the bank. Call it $10 million Canadian, $10 million US, whichever way you want to look at it. For us in terms of the package we have, we're quite lucky that there was this purge of property in Peru and, again, where there's been follow-up work.

Also we put out a press release yesterday on Bendi where again we're reporting 25 grams per tonne as our high. There's fairly large structures in terms of these big anticlines, which are typically known in this area of Peru for being good areas to find mineralization. With the new roads that have gone in it all has road access. We had another area we did chip sampling we had 4 meters of 0.25, but there's a lot of visible gold in the associated mines on strike that belong to third parties. So again, no systematic exploration. In that particular release I said that we're doing shadow of headframe mining without the headframe. So again, the informals can only mine down about 40 to 100 meters max. These systems go down a kilometer to 2 kilometers and have seen no drilling. So for us, the fact that there's guys – I think in the Benditani area there's about 20 small mines in operation and we're grabbing the entire trend. In that particular case we're up to 18,900 hectares and our initial passes are getting quite good gold results along strike in areas that are not being mined, not being drilled. So, it really is about as good as it gets. And so again, that one we're doing additional channel sampling as well. 

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Andrew, exciting times. Full disclosure as always, I am biased, I wouldn't be talking with you if I wasn't. I obviously like the company, I'm a long-term shareholder of the company. I encourage everybody to go to the website. I think it's a pretty phenomenal story and I think in the months and years to come it's going to pick up a lot of traction. The website is palamina.com. Andrew, anything else that you'd like to add?

Andrew Thomson: No, thank you for taking the time to conduct the interview. 

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you for your time, Andrew. Good luck with the conference out there. Bye now.

Andrew Thomson: Okay, thank you. Bye.