Proactive - Interviews for investors
AuMEGA Metals fields high-grade copper at Bunker Hill Project
AuMEGA Metals Ltd (ASX:AAM) managing director and CEO Sam Pazuki joins Proactive’s Tylah Tully to discuss initial high-grade assay results from its Bunker Hill Project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, as part of limited first-pass prospecting.
Key highlights include two outcropping vein samples containing 17.2% copper, 16.9 g/t silver and 0.41 g/t gold, and another with 12.4% copper, 19.1 g/t silver and 0.56 g/t gold.
The project, along the Cape Ray Shear Zone (CRSZ), identified two large intrusive units, including the Nitty Gritty Granite, which may suggest porphyry mineralisation potential. Historic samples in the area revealed peak values of 57% copper, 17.05 g/t gold and 407.5 g/t silver.
The company's recent activities include a completed airborne magnetic survey and a till geochemistry survey with assay results pending. The findings suggest significant copper-gold-silver mineralisation along nearly a kilometre of strike and further exploration plans, potentially including RC and diamond drilling, are under consideration.
AuMEGA Metals is focused on advancing greenfield exploration targets along the CRSZ, which holds multi-million-ounce gold potential.
#ProactiveInvestorrs #ASX #AuMEGAMetals #CopperMining #BunkerHillProject #GoldExploration #SilverMining #HighGradeCopper #NewfoundlandLabrador #PorphyryMineralisation #NittyGrittyGranite #GeochemicalSurvey #AirborneSurvey #MiningNews #ExplorationTargets #ResourceInvesting #CapeRayShearZone #CRSZ #GoldAssays #SilverAssays #MiningExploration #RCDrilling #DiamondDrilling
- Broadcast on:
- 02 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
- Hello, and welcome back to the proactive studio. I'm Tyler Tully, and today I'm joined by AU, Mega Metals Managing Director and CEO Sam Pazuki, who's gonna talk us through the company and its latest news. Sam, thanks for joining us. - Great to be here, Tyler, great to meet you. - Great to meet you too. So before we get into your latest announcement, can you give our viewers an overview about AU Mega and your projects? - Yeah, so we've rebranded as Omega Metals, previously mattered or mining. We're a gold exploration company, focused on a massive property that we have in Newfoundland, Canada, which is in the eastern part of Canada. So we're one of only a couple Australian-listed companies exploring that part of the world, and it's a relatively speaking, it's a brand new jurisdiction as well for gold exploration. - Let's get into your latest results now. You've released the initial assay results from first-pass prospecting at the Bunker Heal project. Now, these results are pretty encouraging, so what can you share with us? - Yeah, no, absolutely, they're very encouraging. I mean, it exceeded our expectations. Bunker Hill is a brand new area. So we've got a massive land package, it's district scale, on two main structures. Bunker Hill sits on the largest structure that with the largest gold structure in Newfoundland that hosts the five million ounce deposit, just up to belt. We've got 110 kilometers of continuous strike on that belt, and Bunker Hill is a 24 kilometer strike project that has seen almost very little exploration. It's got a lot of cover, and traditionally in Canada, exploration geologists tend to go where there's outcrops, and so Bunker Hill is virtually untouched because of the amount of cover that's there. So we went there for the first time in sort of the company's history to have boots on the ground and see if there is any outcrop that we could sample and then do some geological mapping. We had some additional work there done with airborne magnetics. We're still waiting for the results. But that limited prospecting that we did, the geologists did find some, very little, but some outcropping veins. Around some historic samples that carried a lot of gold, a lot of silver and a lot of copper. So we sampled the outcropping veins, and the results were phenomenal. One sample had 17% copper in it, while another one had 12% copper. So this is really important. This is encouraging because it's not something that's been transported there. It's actually in an outcropping vein. So it's in the bedrock. And to have that amount of copper, the whole world's looking for copper. And to have that amount of copper is a phenomenal result. And what makes it even more encouraging is that historic samples that have been collected at the Bunker Hill property, we've got an assay sheet basically that has copper samples ranging from 40% to 57% copper. So it's tying in nicely to some of the historic results. But again, the key differentiator here is that these samples were from outcropping veins. - Yeah, as you said, really encouraging results, 17% copper, and you also identified two large-scale intrusive units. So what's the significance of these results, and what do they tell you about the project's prospectivity? - Yeah, that's right. I mean, when people think of our company, they think of the 610,000 ounces of gold, ounces we've got in resource. It's high-graded shallow. It's at a property called Cape Grey. And geologically, it's an originic-style mineralized system. But when you look, go up the belt, where you've got the Valentine project, five million ounces. It's the geology there, it's intrusive related. And so what we've learned over the last couple of years as we've gone away from the resource to explore the broader belt, which again, nobody has really done, we're finding that the geology changes. So as we've gone up that belt into Malachi, where we spent a couple of years doing exploration work, we're starting to see a shift in the geology indicators that it's more intrusive related as opposed to originic-style. As we've gotten into Bunker Hill, everything points to it being intrusive-style, which is very important. Again, using the analogy or Valentine as the analog for what we have or potentially have, Bunker Hill looks very similar to Valentine. The only thing that's throwing us off right now is the amount of copper we have on the property because they don't have that. But we've got gold samples that grade anywhere from three grams to 18 grams. So the geology looks very similar to Valentine, and that's an important factor in all this. And we're also seeing, in the rocks that we've collected, we're also seeing some other key pathfinders, which again, we don't really see on our belt, but we've seen a considerable amount of fluoride, which we don't assay for it, so we don't have any values for it, but visually it's there, and it's also very rich in iron oxides. And those two key things, along with the copper, the gold, the silver, and we've got silver samples that go up to 400 grams per ton, and as well as tellurium and bismuth, which is through the roof, these are also indicators that there could be something potentially related to a pore free, and no one's looked for pore free is in Newfoundland, so that's one of the things that we are looking at. We see that there is a potential pore pore free, and so the fact that it's intrusive related is a very important characteristic. - So where do you go from here at Bunker Hill? - Yeah, again, this is an area that just hasn't seen a whole lot of exploration, and the first boots on the ground for us really to test this out has been key. It's been magnificent, really. We're waiting for the data to come from the airborne magnetics, 'cause it's actually the only patch of ground that we have in our portfolio that has no magnetics. So we're waiting for that data to come back to see what the structures look like and correlate them with the results that we've collected, but also the results that have been collected historically. We've also done a tail survey over different areas of Bunker Hill, so we're still waiting for assays to come back from that tail survey. So the first step is let's get the data. Let's actually analyze this. Let's see where the areas of interest is for the company, but what we see so far with the results that we have communicated already to the market and the work that we did on the ground, we see two main areas that are really screaming at us to go there and do exploration work. So what we're doing right now in anticipation of the additional data to come back is a winter RC drill program, which we, it's our winter, a real winter in Canada, where we would go and do similar programs that we did last year at Malakite, but we would look to do a winter, bottom a hole, base a tail, or even deeper drilling program at Bunker Hill. - So is there any other news flow that investors can expect what else is the company working on? - Yeah, I mean, it's been a very busy summer for us, a very comprehensive exploration program, with the land package that we have, it's something that belongs to a larger company, frankly, and we've been managing it and doing systematic exploration, the way exploration should be done. And so that means that in the last two and a half years that I've been with the company, the drill programs haven't been big drill programs. I know investors always want to see big drill programs, a lot of meters sort of in headlines, but a lot of those programs end up being wasted. For us, we've been working up the targets. As I mentioned, we've been doing things systematically. We've done diamond drilling. We've put out phase one results for the drilling we've done this summer, which we extended mineralization, where we've got resource, and there's 15 kilometers of strike, but it just hasn't been tested within the resource corridor. We did a second phase of diamond drilling at our Greenfield property in Malakite, which was a small drill program, but we don't have any assays back from that. So we're waiting for the assays for that, waiting for the data on the airborne magnetics at Bunker Hill, waiting for the till results, that the assays from the till programs at intersection, which is next to Bunker Hill, as well as Bunker Hill till results as well. So we've got a lot of this data waiting to come, but we're already thinking of 2025. The small drill program at Malakite was just a small drill program. It does require a larger drilling campaign. And in Bunker Hill, as I mentioned, it's absolutely screaming at us. So we're again planning ahead for 2025 and looking to see what the program looks like for next year. - Clearly, it sounds like very busy and exciting times for the company. Before we close this one out, can you quickly run our story, or your investor case and why investors should be interested in the company? - Yeah, no, absolutely. We have a slide in our corporate presentation, one of the first slides in there, which shows a map of Newfoundland and then basically it's the value proposition. It's one of my favorite slides because for a little company like ours, there is so much that's great about it, so much that investors should be looking for and so much to be looking out for as well. So first and foremost, what really drew me into the company was that we've got a district-scale land package on the largest gold structure, which we have 110 kilometers or continuous strike. More recently, El Dorado Gold has signed a joint venture with the junior that was next to us. And then past their property is Caliber, which is building a mine, which has the five million ounces. So we've got the largest land package on the right structure in Newfoundland and we believe there's more multi-million ounce deposits on this structure because of, again, a lot of it just hasn't been explored. We've got an excellent shareholder register. I think it's one of the best shareholder registers in the industry. More than half the register is either B2 Gold, which is a strategic investor. They're a multi-million ounce gold producer. We're out of 90 companies that could have invested in a Newfoundland, they chose us two years ago and continue to be supportive. They own 10% and then the remaining 45% from, I guess, or 40% are global institutions. So it's very uncommon to see junior companies with that amount of institutional shareholding. So then we've got a fantastic shareholder register that believes in what we're doing, how we do it. And that world-class exploration approach is really a differentiator between us and a lot of companies in Canada. And finally, we've got a lot of brain power within the company. We've got an excellent board that has made discoveries. I feel that if you've made a discovery, you're bound to make another discovery. We have a board of directors who have founded big companies who have made big discoveries. We've got a management team that's rock solid. We've actually just hired a new vice president of exploration, Rick Greenwood, who came to us from Great Bear. And Great Bear was one of the biggest success stories in the last decade in Canada, where they went from a 5 million market cap company, made their big discovery, and then ended up getting sold to Kinross for 1.8 billion. And I tell the team, internally, we are the next Great Bear. That's what we're working towards. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, and there's a lot to love about Omega, and we're super excited about what's next. - Sam, thank you so much for joining us today. - Yeah, thank you.