Astra Exploration (TSXV:ASTR) - Largest Drill Plan Tests District Scale at La Manchuria

Brian Miller (0:00)

I'm Brian Miller. I'm the CEO, Director, and co-founder of Astra Exploration.

We are focused on high-grade gold and silver in Argentina and Chile. We just recently announced that we are committing to our largest drill campaign yet as a company, 10,000 to 20,000 meters at our flagship project, La Manchuria in southern Argentina. And we're also committing to an inaugural drill program at our Don Mario project in northern Chile. It's a high-sulfidation epithermal system.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Ron, good to see you.

Brian Miller (0:31)

Good to see you again, Matt.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

Yeah, so we're here at Beaver Creek. Busiest hack out there, isn't it?

I know you're wall to wall and have been for a few weeks.

So thanks for making the time for us today.

Brian Miller (0:39)

Absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_2 (0:41)

So what do you want out of this week? Is it just brand awareness or meeting shareholders?

What do you get from this?

Brian Miller (0:49)

It's all of that. We're meeting current shareholders. We've been pretty quiet the last several weeks over the summer. We've had assays come out from La Manchuria.

We're just really kicking off market and awareness and letting people know, just kind of digest the results from the Phase 3 drill program and let them know what's coming down the pike here in the next several months.

SPEAKER_2 (1:09)

Okay. Well, let's start with that. Like Phase 3 is drawing over, you've got a big campaign coming up, but what does Phase 3 tell you? How does it inform your understanding of what La Manchuria is?

Brian Miller (1:20)

The biggest takeaway from Phase 3 is that we saw expansion. There's two targets at La Manchuria. I should say now, two systems, they're no longer targets or systems. One is a disseminated bulk tonnage system at surface that is growing and expanding in every direction.

The other one is a high-grade vein system. And so they are two discrete targets. Both of those are expanding and growing.

SPEAKER_2 (1:41)

But they're two separate systems. Correct.

Brian Miller (1:45)

All interrelated to the same geological event per se, but manifest differently.

SPEAKER_2 (1:51)

Right. Okay. So all the assays are back. You understand what you're playing with here. I think some folk interpreted some of the early assays negatively.

Were they right?

Brian Miller (2:06)

Yeah, we had a target that didn't work out.

And unfortunately, it was a nice target. This was the converging vein thesis. And we had one to two meter thick veins. A number of them looked like they were converging into a single structure. We drilled underneath it. There were veins there, but they were in a poor host rock. So they were narrow and they were low grade. These were the deepest holes we've drilled on this project yet. There was 300 to 350 meters depth.

So we had one area locally that didn't pan out. And what I'm trying to emphasize with people is it doesn't mean that the project is dead at depth. You have one local area where a target didn't work out. We still have high grade feeder structures that we're targeting. We still have high grade veins that we're discovering and expanding on like the Basalto Zone. That's wide open. It returned 80 grams over 2 meters of gold.

SPEAKER_2 (2:55)

Right.

Brian Miller (2:56)

So nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_2 (2:57)

It's nothing wrong with that. So it hasn't changed your thinking at all?

Other than that, the hypothesis of yours didn't quite work out in that one specific zone. In terms of the rest of the modeling and design of the drill program, has it changed your thinking?

Brian Miller (3:16)

It's changed our thinking in that the host rocks where we drilled that were not good, those are andesites, and the grades there can be erratic. You could have high grades in those rocks, but they're more erratic. It's more predictable in the rhyolites and pyroclastics.

SPEAKER_2 (3:35)

Right.

Brian Miller (3:36)

So we're more focused on the rocks that we know continuously deliver. But how do you vector in on this?

Well, we know certain areas that are more predominantly those good host rocks. It's just that these andesites, some of the listeners might recall, previously the andesites were thought to be completely barren. And we actually had intersections within andesites that were very high grades. So with this converging thesis, we thought, you got to drill that. Some of these andesites were only 10 meters thick and you were right back into the good host rocks. So a target like that, you have to drill. And unfortunately, it was in a non-productive andesite unit.

SPEAKER_2 (4:12)