Corazon shifts exploration focus to Australia

Interviews

Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Corazon Mining Limited (ASX:CZN) Managing Director, Brett Smith

Donna Sawyer: Hello I’m Donna Sawyer for the Finance News Network and joining me from diversified exploration company, Corazon Mining (ASX:CZN) is Managing Director, Brett Smith. Brett Smith thanks for joining me.

Brett Smith: Thank you very much Donna.

Donna Sawyer: Corazon Mining has a diverse portfolio of development assets. Could you tell me about your projects and where your focus is right now?

Brett Smith: We have two main focuses. We’re operating in North America and Canada, we’ve had the Lynn Lake copper sulphide project which we believe, is a future development opportunity. In Australia, we have an exploration play in Western Australia called the Top Up Rise project, which is a copper gold exploration project.

Donna Sawyer: You were previously focussed more heavily on the Lynn Lake project in Canada. Can you tell me why that priority has shifted?

Brett Smith: Lynn Lake is still, we believe, a very valuable asset and we haven’t shifted focus from it, we’re still working on it. Lynn Lake is a nickel project and we need to take a longer term view with nickel, because the metal price has gone down considerably. We’re working on it in the background. We’re doing our mining studies, engineering studies and we’re looking at what we need to do to get it into production, once the nickel price improves.
The Top Up Rise project in Western Australia is a unique opportunity. It’s a grassroots exploration play, but it’s a big target and potentially quite rewarding. So it’s a short term thing. We plan to be drilling in the coming months at Top Up Rise and it’s quite exciting for us.

Donna Sawyer: The Top Up Rise project in Western Australia is about to start a drilling campaign. What are you hoping to uncover?

Brett Smith: We’re exploring for an IOCG, so that’s an iron oxide copper gold deposit in Australia, the best known one would be Olympic Dam. But there’s also Prominent Hill, which is being mined and Carrapateena is another well-known one. These are big deposits, Olympic Dam is probably nine billion tonnes of ore, Carrapateena and Prominent Hill are plus two hundred million tonnes. So these are big things, there’re not many of them around but they’re very valuable. So we hope in our drill program to uncover an IOCG.

Donna Sawyer: Can you talk us through your exploration strategy at the Top Up Rise project?

Brett Smith: Top Up Rise is a new frontier really in Australia. It’s completely sand covered, it’s on the edge of the Gibson Desert, it’s a gravity anomaly sitting underneath the sand. It’s only recently been discovered by work from the Geological Survey Western Australia, and we’re lucky enough to have the first lease in this region. The reason we think there could be an IOCG there, is that the closest outcrops are anomalous in all the metals that make up these things like Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill and Carrapateena.
So we’ve got the biggest gravity anomaly in the region. Our strategy is to – we’ve just finished a detailed gravity survey and that’ll tell us where to drill, what depth to drill etc. etc. And we hope to be drilling there in May this year, so next month.

Donna Sawyer: Let’s talk about the Lynn Lake project in Canada. What have you uncovered so far and what are your plans with the project?

Brett Smith: We’ve changed our strategy to some degree in Lynn Lake. We’re exploring a deep high grade sulphide breccia we discovered, and we’re getting very good drill hits – quite successful exploration. We were putting our announcements out to the market; in a falling nickel price it didn’t do us any good, so we pulled back. We’ve had a look at - OK what do we need to do to get this project into mining? There’s significant drill defined, near surface tonnages that we don’t include in our resource and we modelled that mineralisation, and we’re putting it into our mine plan. And we’re looking at also the neighbouring resources owned by the companies, and we’re looking at what we need to do to start up a mining operation in Lynn Lake. And we’re working with our neighbours closely on this.

Donna Sawyer: Let’s talk about financials. Can you take us through your funding model?

Brett Smith: We’re cashed up at the moment; we’ve just finished a placement and SPP - a Share Purchase Plan. The placement of the shortfall on the SPP was oversubscribed by 100 per cent, so we’ve got a lot of interest in the Company. And that’s off the back of Top Up Rise. To fully test the Top Up Rise project, which is our main focus for the next six months, will cost less than $1 million. We’ll know what’s there for that amount of money.
The holding costs of our other projects, particularly the Canadian assets are not significant at all. We don’t need to spend any money there and really, our expenditure going forward does depend on what we get at Top Up Rise.

Donna Sawyer: Finally Brett. What would you like to see Corazon Mining achieve by the end of this year?

Brett Smith: I think we’re all looking a lot shorter term than the end of this year. If we get drilling in May, that’s the big thing for us and so we’re looking at that. Exploration wise, we want to understand Top Up Rise and we want to define in the short term, what is there and what it is. And as far as the other projects, we believe in the next six months, we can define a path for the Lynn Lake nickel copper sulphide project and have brilliant business plan, for the development of that asset.

Donna Sawyer: Brett Smith, thanks for the update on Corazon Mining.

Brett Smith: Thank you very much Donna.

Ends

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