Cabral Gold on Commercial Production, Phase 1 Expansion, and a Six-Deposit Resource Update

Trevor Hall (0:15)

Cabral Gold has crossed a line most juniors never reach. The company poured first gold at its Cuiú Cuiú district in Brazil's Tapajós region on September 10th.

Three weeks later, it sold 2,400 ounces at over $4,200 an ounce. Commercial production is targeted this quarter with the global resource update promised by Year In. We can also add a $45 million Canadian strategic investment from Peruvian miner Apaliana, and the company has been publishing high-grade drill results from the help from a six-drill rig campaign. Cabral Gold is up 2x this past year. President and CEO is Alan Carter. Alan, welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

Alan Carter (0:57)

Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me on.

Trevor Hall (1:00)

Alan, for listeners who are new to this story, give us a short version. What is the Tapajós Gold Province in Brazil? Who's there and how does Cabral fit in?

Alan Carter (1:11)

OK, well, the Tapajós Gold Province in northern Brazil, Michael, is the site of the world's largest ever gold rush anywhere on this planet. So back in the 1980s, there were about a million people that rushed into this part of Brazil. It's the southwestern corner of Pará state, and they were recovering gold from the straves, and it's quite a big area. It's about 250 kilometers across. There's a whole series of placer camps here. And like all gold rushes, the once the alluvial gold or the placer gold have been recovered, or most of it been recovered. Folks went back to what they were doing before, or at least a lot of them did. But the hard rock, the real opportunity in the Taperjoss is that the hard rock sources for the vast majority of these placer gold fields has not been identified so far. So we've been working there for some time. I've been involved in several discoveries in the Taperjoss region, notably the Tocantins Inyo Gold Deposit, which is quite close to our project. In fact, it's just 20 kilometers to the southeast of us. So G Mining has made a big success of developing that gold project. It's now Brazil's third largest open pit gold mine.

There are some other players in the region such as Serabi Gold. We've been there quite some time, and we're on the same fault zone, and we have the ground immediately to the northwest of G Mining. So it's a very exciting area. It's a very exciting region.

As I said, most of these placer gold fields of the hard rock sources have not been identified. So it's an exciting place to work.

Trevor Hall (2:55)

You announced first gold in September, first gold pour rather in September, your first sale at the end of the month. You haven't given production guidance during the ramp up, but you told another interview recently that you expected commercial production in November. Still ticking to November, what are the numbers that you want to hit to declare it?

Alan Carter (3:14)

Yeah, mid-November, Michael, look, this phase one project, Steve, we're developing the district in two phases. Phase one is a heat leach operation, which is mining and processing the saprolitic material. So this is the weathered material. It's about 60, 70 meters thick. So we are ramping up to commercial production.

Commercial production for us is about 70% by design throughput, and we want to achieve that 70% throughput by for a period of at least 30 days. So yeah, I think early to mid-November, we should hit commercial production according to those criteria. So yeah, it's so far so good. It's going very well.

Trevor Hall (4:03)

We should remind it, and then you've emphasized it within your deck. This is a phased approach as well too. So you're doing this gold production right now just because you're looking at kind of a larger story down the road. But at this point as well too, these are operations that are going to further advance the company.

Alan Carter (4:20)

Yeah, there is a much larger phase two project coming along behind it.

We expect to complete a PA next year on the phase two, which will be a much bigger hard rock mine. But for now, the focus is on optimizing what we've just built for phase one, which as I said is a heat leach operation, which is mining and processing the saprolitic material. So this is the weathered material. We are hoping to expand that in the next nine months or so, to double that throughput. And we'll be putting out some guidance on our expansion plans with respect to phase one in the next few weeks. So we're quite busy.

Trevor Hall (5:02)

Now, Alan, could you talk a bit more about comparisons? Because you did mention at the top, G Mining, it's a Tocantin Zeno.