Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Corazon Mining Limited (ASX:CZN) Managing Director, Brett SmithLelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network and joining me from diversified exploration company, Corazon Mining
(ASX:CZN) is its Managing Director, Brett Smith. Brett welcome to RIU’s Resources Round-up here in Melbourne.
Brett Smith: Thank you for having me.
Lelde Smits: Corazon Mining recently raised $3 million to fund the next phase of exploration at the Top Up Rise project in Western Australia. Could you outline your strategy for the project?
Brett Smith: Yes OK, well Top Up Rise is a new exploration frontier for us and Australia really. It’s a big geophysical anomaly; we’ve just finished our first ever drilling program at Top Up Rise. It’s all under cover so it was exciting for us. We discovered a lot of sulphide mineralisation throughout the project. And really this next phase has taken that information, and I guess targeting the drilling more precisely, where we think the better mineralisation will be.
In tandem with that the rocks we’ve seen lead us to believe that aerial geophysics, in particular VTEM, may be useful in helping us targeting the up and coming drilling. So in the next couple of days a large VTEM survey should commence as well.
Lelde Smits: And how long will this next process take and how long before the market could expect to see the next round of results from Top Up Rise?
Brett Smith: We’re hoping we should commence drilling within the next week. The geophysics that we’re planning should start in the next couple of days. We’re really limited this year by the weather. Top Up Rise, it can get quite hot out there and if we get a cyclone in Northern Australia, it can be affected by rains. So we expect to have the next four to six weeks available for exploration. So that’s the limiting factor. We want to hit it as hard as we can in that short period and really get enough information to really go into the next field season, which will probably be February March in 2014, quite strongly.
Lelde Smits: Corazon also has the Lynn Lake nickel sulphide project in Canada. At what stage is the development of this asset?
Brett Smith: Lynn Lake is the Company’s main asset; a lot of people forget that with the current focus on Top Up Rise. Top Up Rise provides an excellent opportunity for the Company and potentially something quite large, if we’re successful there. But Lynn Lake really is a foundation of the Company. Lynn Lake is a nickel copper sulphide project in an old mining district in Canada. And we believe we’ve got the key asset that can restart mining at Lynn Lake.
Lynn Lake very much is dependent on the nickel metal price; we’re quite bullish about that. And a lot of the experts and consensus is that the nickel metal price, will start to improve and we’re looking at a price above $10 a pound going forward. So we like to position Lynn Lake to take advantage of that appreciation in the nickel metal price, going forward. We’ve renegotiated our option to purchase the project out to 2015 and we’re just getting it all right now, so that we can take advantage of it.
Lelde Smits: Proceeds of the latest placement will also be put to studies at your Canadian gold and nickel assets. How do you expect these studies will facilitate the development of the asset?
Brett Smith: At Lynn Lake we’ve spent a lot of money already in getting to the stage where it is. We don’t have any requirement for spending on Lynn Lake, so the work we’re doing is quite low cost, its engineering studies metallurgical studies. But we’re dealing with an old mining district that’s operated for more than 24 years, in the past. So it’s a low cost expense for us.
We’ve also got a little gold project just outside of Lynn Lake, its early stage. It hasn’t been explored since the 1980s but incredible surface tenor of mineralisation, gold result up to 1,180 ppm, good Moly results as well. So it’s an exciting little project, but again it’s not a big expense. We don’t have a big requirement to spend in Canada, and everything we do there is because we want to add value to what we’ve got.
Lelde Smits: Turning to financials now. Having just raised $3 million, how long do you expect to be funded?
Brett Smith: OK well the exploration ahead of us for the next couple of months will probably cost us about $700,000. And after this placement is completed, we’ll have about $3.4 million in the bank and we’ll really come into next year being very well funded. If we are successful at Top Up Rise, we’ll be hitting that pretty hard and spending a lot of exploration dollars. If we’re not, the Company has very low overheads, we can survive and do the work at Lynn Lake for some time to come, and there would be no requirement for raising in that situation. But we’re pretty positive about Lynn Lake, we see a lot of potential and we expect to get results there.
Lelde Smits: Finally Brett, as exploration at the Top Up Rise project ramps up, what news flow can shareholders look forward to?
Brett Smith: OK we’ve got a very busy couple of months coming up for the Company. As I said, the geophysics will start and we’re quite excited about the VTEM and what it’s going to show us, particularly with respect to massive sulphide, the potential etc. And also the drilling, the drilling should commence next week, the crews are mobilising to site early on Monday. And as soon as that drilling starts, as soon as the rigs turning, we’ll announce that the drilling has commenced as well.
So going forward, we’ll have the analysis of the drilling the results. But anything visual of course, we’ll announce to the market immediately. And those assay results will come into the Company over the next couple of months, towards Christmas.
Lelde Smits: Brett Smith thank you for the update to Corazon Mining.
Brett Smith: Thank you very much.
Ends
