Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Adelaide Resources Limited (ASX:ADN) Managing Director and CEO, Chris DrownLelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network and joining me from exploration company, Adelaide Resources Limited
(ASX:ADN) is its Managing Director and CEO, Chris Drown. Chris welcome to The Australian Copper Conference here in Brisbane.
Chris Drown: Thank you.
Lelde Smits: Adelaide Resources is focused on your wholly owned Alford West copper prospect on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. What attracted you to the region?
Chris Drown: The region has very significant historic copper-gold production. And furthermore it sits in one of what is now regarded as one of the world’s great copper belts, which is a domain called the Olympic Copper-Gold Province.
Lelde Smits: Adelaide Resources has this year undertaken a first pass drilling at Alford West. What were the highlights of the results and how do they support your belief in the prospect?
Chris Drown: We have achieved some of what we regard as some of the best exploration results that the Company’s ever achieved. And indeed, we believe, will be some of the best exploration results that any company will achieve in the nation this year. The highlights were a 20 metre intersection of 4.2 per cent copper and another intersection of 45 metres of 1.5 per cent copper, and 1.8 grams per tonne of gold. Wonderful stuff.
Lelde Smits: Looking further at the results, the high grade intercepts appear at quite shallow depths of 30, 40 and 50 metres. Why is this significant?
Chris Drown: Well actually they start even shallower than that. We’ve got high grade mineralisation from as shallow as five. The reason that they’re shallow at the moment is that we’re only drilling shallow holes presently; the deeper drilling is yet to be done.
Lelde Smits: As you progress your drilling program, what is the main target at Alford West and how much of it has been drilled?
Chris Drown: What we’re exploring here is a 3.2 kilometre long historic geochemical anomaly that was defined by a past explorer. To this point, only one tenth of that 3.2 kilometres has been drilled in any detail.
Lelde Smits: And Chris, what kind of upside do you think it could contain?
Chris Drown: Well we don’t think that there is anything particularly special about the one tenth of it that we’ve drilled, compared to the rest. So we are very optimistic that we will continue to get very, very exciting results as we extend the drilling.
Lelde Smits: The Company’s share price did recently spike on the back of some results. How much potential do you believe remains in the ore body?
Chris Drown: Well I guess it’s still early days because its early exploration, we have to do a lot of drilling. Potential wise, I think it’s probably one of the best prospects that the Company’s ever been - that it has ever explored. The grades are very attractive at this point, so we think it’s clearly our focus as we move forward. It’s a very, very exciting prospect.
Lelde Smits: What is occurring at Alford West now and when can we expect the next round of results?
Chris Drown: We moved very quickly to commit to follow up drilling program after we’d received the first very encouraging results. So we have a drill rig working there as we speak. We are working in, around rain and in a crop paddock, so that creates a few logistical issues for us. But we have released some preliminary results to the market last week and we anticipate final results will start to be flowing within probably about two weeks from now.
Lelde Smits: Turning to funding, Adelaide Resources has just put away a $1.2 million placement. What does this support mean for the Company?
Chris Drown: It’s been a very, very difficult environment for exploration companies and resources companies generally. And we actually had no trouble at all placing that $1.2 million; there was a lot of interest in it. So you know we think that we’re on the radar, on the investment radar, there’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing and that’s obviously a wonderful position to be in. Many of our peers unfortunately aren’t enjoying that same attention.
Lelde Smits: How will you allocate the funds to Alford West and what is your strategy for the project, over the next year?
Chris Drown: Well clearly the funds that we raised will go to that project and specifically to that prospect. It will go toward drilling more holes, that’s the critical bit of work that we need to do. Our strategy as we go forward is to first of all, as I said before, we’re only doing fairly shallow drilling at the moment and what we want to do is extend that shallow drilling, out along this 3.2 kilometre target zone. Ultimately however, we’ll have to do deeper drilling as well, but the shallow drilling is relatively cheap compared to the deeper drilling. So let’s map that bit out first and that’ll help us define where we need to go with deeper holes in the future.
Lelde Smits: Finally Chris, with a steady stream of results and a fresh round of funds already locked in the first half of this year. How would you like to see Adelaide Resources end 2013?
Chris Drown: Look, I think the answer to that is that we’re going to be obviously very focused on this prospect over the next few months, as we work through this drilling program that’s underway. We would love to see and we’re confident that we will see further very promising results like that. At that point, one would hope the market will recognise that this is really quite a significant discovery and will start to value us accordingly.
Lelde Smits: Chris Drown, thank you for the introduction to Adelaide Resources.
Chris Drown: It’s my pleasure.
Ends
