Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Trafford Resources Limited (ASX:TRF) CEO and Managing Director, Ian FinchClive Tompkins: Hello Clive Tompkins reporting for the Finance News Network. Joining me from Trafford Resources Limited
(ASX:TRF) is CEO and Managing Director, Ian Finch. Ian welcome back. Trafford is a base and precious metals explorer, where are your projects located?
Ian Finch: Largely where we started off life at Wilcherry Hill in South Australia. But more recently we’ve expanded, particularly in our iron ore sector, into Western Australia at a place called Twin Peaks. And we’ve taken a massive investment in a company called Orinoco Gold Limited
(ASX:OGX), essentially because we want to get used to the idea and used to the way in which business is done in South America. The Orinoco gold project is in Brazil.
Clive Tompkins: Starting with Wilcherry Hill in South Australia. Ian, what does it contain?
Ian Finch: Wilcherry Hill as I’ve often described it is an Aladdin’s Cave; it is about 1,000 square kilometres sitting right above what we would call a heat engine or granite. And that heat engine has infused a lot of minerals into the overlying rocks and we’ve got gold, which is why we picked it up in the first place from Aquila Resources Limited
(ASX:AQA). At Weednanna there’s gold right throughout the system there. We got somewhat deflected into the iron ore market because in 2006/07, China and the rest of the world wanted iron. So we concentrated on the iron and somewhat left the gold behind, but there’s very, very strong iron in Wilcherry Hill as well.
Then came the Paris announcement and that was the discovery by one of our neighbours of a silver/gold epithermal system, which we knew there were epithermal systems in the region. So that diverted our attention again into the western part of our tenements, and we’ve completed very detailed aeromagnetic surveys there. We’ve completed very detailed ground geochemistry and we’ve completed our first pass qualitative drilling there. Later this year we plan to follow up that qualitative drilling with a quantitative drilling, and that’s been very successful by the way.
Clive Tompkins: Good. And Ian is there anything else you would like to say about Wilcherry Hill?
Ian Finch: Yeah I think the people will have heard us talk about Telephone Dam. Now that’s one of those sleepers because geologically at Wilcherry Hill, there’s a lot of what we call carbonates that you would know as marble or limestone – those are carbonates. Geologically what those rocks do is they tend over a long period of time, to suck up minerals and they particularly suck up the likes of lead, zinc and silver.
So at Telephone Dam and other places within the Wilcherry Hill area and outside the Wilcherry Hill area like at Menninnie Dam, you’ve got large amounts of this carbonated lead/zinc/silver. The problem with it from our point of view is that base metal exploration is a very expensive and long line period of time, to bring it into fruition. It’s not something a junior can do straight off. But if all our plans and our investment strategies come good as I believe they will this year, then we’ll have enough money to go back into the lead/zinc/silver exploration mode.
Clive Tompkins: Heading to Western Australia and your Twin Peaks joint venture with Independence Group NL
(ASX:IGO) Ian, you’ve just been doing some drilling. Can you give us an update on the results?
Ian Finch: Certainly and firstly, I’d just like to say what a great joint venture partner Independence Group has been. And in order to get to this drilling program, I think I should also mention that there’s been what you might call a lot of old fashioned boots-on-the-ground geology done, with a serious amount of mapping to identify the very strong targets which we’ve recently drilled. And because of that old style boots-on geology, the targets have come up trumps. We’ve discovered at surface something like 15 targets over 21 kilometres of direct shipping grade haematite ore, above 60 per cent at surface.
The drilling program of 5,000 metres, which was agreed with the Independence Group, has just been completed. We got the first four holes back and made an announcement yesterday. The holes were to test basically, if that surface direct shipping ore continued to depth and I’m happy to say that it does. We tested to the 80 metre level and it’s continuing very, very nicely down to the 80 metre and the ore couldn’t be better. It’s going to be a great blending ore, it’s going to be much in demand, its plus 65 per cent haematite with very, very low contaminants. The question is how much of it is there now and we eagerly await the next batch of samples coming through.
Clive Tompkins: And Ian, Trafford Resources also has an investment in a gold project in Brazil via a stake in Orinoco Resources. How did this come about?
Ian Finch: At Trafford we’re like any other investor, we like to invest in the people who are involved in these things. And we got to know the Orinoco team very, very closely - Mark Papendieck and his team. Mark has lived in Brazil for I think, six years. The two other major players are both Brazilian nationals who actually completed their doctorates here in Western Australia. So they’re very clued up but very familiar with the Brazilian situation - so where is it? It’s about 150 kilometres from Brasilia, the capital of Brazil in the State of Goias.
We don’t put any money into anything that we haven’t seen, so I went there and crawled down some of the old tunnels and the adits which were where the Grand Perros or the local artisanal miners, have been working and pulling out lots and lots of gold. And I think, well I know that it was that which persuaded me to go back to the Board and say we should be investing in this project, it is huge. It was then later proven to be by Mark Papendieck, the Managing Director arranging for bulk samples to be taken out of a lot of these adits.
That is the way to best sample these coarse grain gold things and that was running about 22 grams. Just down the road, Troy Resources Limited
(ASX:TRY) had pulled out a number of hundreds of ounces of gold at 29 grams. This is a high grade gold district and I’m very, very pleased to be involved in it and I know the team there will do a great job.
Clive Tompkins: And Ian now to your financials. What’s your cash position and is Trafford Resources fully funded?
Ian Finch: Yeah look the way Clive that our financials work, is we very rarely carry more than $3 or $4 million in treasury. We have had a business strategy over some time now which is required investments, so we’ve got liquid assets that if you like, we like to look at those as our insurance. So if we run too low in treasury, then it’s easy enough for us to top up from our investments. We don’t want to do that, it’s more that that’s just an insurance policy. So we’ve got something in the region of $10 to $12 million in liquid assets that we can use if we need to. So there’s little chance of us running out of that because I think, we’ve been around for too long to let those things run down too much.
Clive Tompkins: And last question Ian. Where would you like to see Trafford Resources this time next year?
Ian Finch: This is a seminal year for Trafford; we’re in our seventh year. And I make the point privately to people that Western Mining were an exploration company for seven years, before Kambalda came along in a nickel boom. Now we’ve been in exploration and an aspirant miner for seven years. We have a ready-to-go mine in South Australia in the form of the Wilcherry Hill iron ore project, which is being managed and developed by IronClad Mining Limited
(ASX:IFE). I think that will happen this year I’m sure, and that will take us into the realms of the early Western Mining type of model. If we can be as successful or half as successful as Western Mining, I will be very happy.
Clive Tompkins: Certainly and thanks very much Ian for the update.
Ian Finch: It’s a pleasure.
Ends
