How Big Does Altamira Gold's Maria Bonita Need to Be? CEO Michael Bennett Has a Number in Mind

Trevor Hall (0:15)

Last month, Altamira Gold updated the resource at its Maria Bonita deposit in Brazil and more than doubled the inferred resource. The company says mineralization remains open in several directions and additional stepout drilling is ongoing.

So, what are the next steps? CEO is Michael Bennett. Michael, welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

Michael Bennett (0:36)

Thank you very much, Michael, but great to be with you.

Trevor Hall (0:39)

Waukeshu, the headline numbers, Michael. What does Maria Bonita look like compared to the maiden resource in May 2025?

Michael Bennett (0:47)

So, yeah, in 2025, we had 720,000 ounces of indicating inferred. It was really a very, very limited amount of drilling as well, with something like four, just over 4,000 meters, we used to put that resource together. And what we've been really surprised about is the new discoveries, both to the west at depth and also alongside the porphyry, because the wall rock has also been discovered to be mineralized on the western flank of the Maria Bonita intrusive. And so with 12 holes and less than 4,000 meters of drilling over the last year, we've been able to add another just over 600,000 ounces.

When you work that out, it's 153 ounces of gold per meter of drilling, which is pretty incredible when you think about the sort of size of the deposit now. And this is something, if you would like to compare it, we can compare it with some deposits like Paraka II, which has a similar head grade of 0.43 grams per ton gold, has metallurgy, which is much, much more difficult. And we're on to something now, which is build up and build up and build up the volume of this, to show that this porphyry district really can gain millions of ounces very quickly.

Trevor Hall (2:24)

I want to talk more about the recent resource and how that chart surpassed for what you're doing at Altamira, but you did want to talk about Maria Bonita West, which is more recent news. Why are you excited about that since getting access?

Michael Bennett (2:38)

Well, we're very excited about that, Michael, because we had previously thought over this first two rounds of drilling that we'd done, that maybe the deposit was actually cut off to the West.

We'd hit some sterile rock there, a rock called Felspar Porphyry, which has no gold in it. But as fate will have it, now we've drilled hole 36, and at about 280 meters depth, we cut a new porphyry.

And we're calling it a brand new porphyry for a very simple reason. Maria Bonita is non-magnetic. The new porphyry, Maria Bonita West, is magnetic. It has magnetite both in the quartz veins and in the intrusive host rock. And it also has pyrite. It has 2% to 3% pyrite. And with the same sort of quartz veins, very dark quartz veins and the free gold sitting in there. And so we hit in the bottom of that hole, 36, just over 70 meters at 0.5 grams per tonne gold. We bottomed in mineralization. And obviously at the time, we were drilling under the farmer's fence. But now we are actually on our first hole within that new farm. It's our mining rights, but it's his land property. And we're very excited to be able to say that we're drilling now from south to north through this new intrusive body.

Trevor Hall (4:07)

Let's talk about the recently announced resource.

You did drill 3,868 meters. Inferred tonnage went from about 26 million up to 70 million tons, roughly 4 million tons per hole. Kind of talk about your assumptions regarding inferred tonnage.

Michael Bennett (4:26)

Well, so, you know, the thing that's so incredible about these bodies is that, as a junior, probably you wouldn't normally be looking for a pawl tree, for a very simple reason that they're very expensive to drill out.

And so, you know, you would have to go through hundreds of meters of sterile rock before you got to the intrusive. However, our pawl frees are 1.8 billion years old. They're sitting right in the middle of the South American continent. And for a simple reason that they haven't been completely eroded, we have these things sitting on surface. So we've got an alliance chance of every hole we put down, of adding on to both the tonnage and to the ounces of gold that we have in the resource. And that's exactly what we've done. Now, we've been very, very successful.

Of the 44 holes that are included in the resource, only two holes were drilled that have low, very low grades and almost no mineralization. Everything else runs. And so we've had hundreds of meters of this consistent mineralization. Of the just over 9,000 meters of drilling that we've done so far, the highest grade in one meter is just over 7 grams, and the second highest grade is 2.4 grams. So it doesn't have any negative effect mineralization in that. It is continuously mineralized throughout this intrusive. And so when we hit it, and we see these quartz veins, we know about mineralization.