Marimaca Copper (TSX:MARI) - Drilling Results Confirm World-Class Scale at Pampa Medina

Hayden Locke (0:00)

Hayden Locke, CEO of Marimaca Copper. I am currently sitting up in our construction camp at site in Mejianes, about to do site visits with our lenders on the main project. But I'm talking to you today about the next round of, frankly, pretty extraordinary drilling at Pampa Medina.

Matt (0:15)

Yeah, we saw the press release.

Extraordinary, and you must be super, super pleased. But before we kind of get into like headline grays, et cetera, what is today's drilling results done in terms of changing your understanding of Pampa Medina?

Hayden Locke (0:29)

It hasn't really changed our understanding. It's just been really positive in that the continuity of that ultra hybrid zone has continued further to the west. And it's a very sick hybrid zone. And we'd also had multiple step outs further to the west and to the south that have confirmed further continuity of that mineralized horizon. So the package is getting larger. The theory is very much intact. And Sergio's original theory for why we've been to the drill this target is being proven with every single drill hole that we drill.

And we're starting to get excited about not just the potential at Pampa Medina, but also the potential for this type of mineralization to extend over a much larger footprint.

Matt (1:07)

Okay, well, look, okay, so you've got continuity scale, and this system seems to be extending beyond the original model. Well, good news.

Let's deal with those headline numbers, which people would have got excited about first. So what are the numbers we're talking about?

Hayden Locke (1:23)

Yeah, well, maybe I'll throw up a couple of slides, Matt, just so that we can give everybody sort of the context of where we're thinking about. The first slide just shows the map, and really what we're focusing on is this small area down here, a much broader package of over 16,000 hectares of land, which we think is perspective for this type of mineralization. And we will, in the fullness of time, go back and drill Sierra Norte and Pampa Norte. Right now, we're doing some track drilling over here at Madrugador to identify the next round of targets to drill. And as you can see, that's three, four, five kilometers to the west. So we think that this has the potential to be an enormous sediment hosted system, and we're excited about the potential.

But I think first, maybe I'll compare it to the sediment hosted copper basins, because I think there is a misunderstanding amongst investors looking at our story about what we have here. This is not a porphyry. It's not a Chilean porphyry. This is a sediment hosted copper deposit. And I've said to you previously that the comparisons or the comparatives for this type of project are in the Kupferschiefer in Poland and Germany, and in the Central African Copperbelt and primarily Kamoa-Kakula. What I want to draw out from this slide is just the average grade thickness of typical deposits in the Kupferschiefer. And so on the left hand side, you've got the Nova Sol project, obviously came to market with a big bang, huge resource over a large area. But the average grade thickness, which is what you see in this diagram on the left, is somewhere between four and five percent copper meters. So that's just the average true thickness multiplied by the average grade of the deposit. The average grade of that Nova Sol deposit in its measured and indicated category is about 1.2 percent copper with 38 grams a tonne silver. Obviously, that silver is very valuable. At today's prices, 38 grams a tonne silver is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.7 percent additional copper grade. And on the right hand side, you've got a historical mine owned by KGHM, which has been operating for 50, 60 years, with an average grade of about 1.9 percent plus 35 grams a tonne silver. But over a slightly broader true thickness, somewhere between 4 and 5 meters, but really the high grade copper zone is roughly 3 to 4 meters. So in the Ruegner deposit, you're talking about an average grade thickness of about 8 percent. If we then have a look at Kamoa-Kakula, obviously, Kakula is the Bonanza grade system that Robert Friedman was so excited about. And what you see on the right hand side is again, the average grade thickness contours at a 1 percent cutoff grade. In the middle, the very dark red, that's about 40 percent meters. In the slightly less dark red, 30 to 40 percent meters. And then as you go into this sort of brown-orange color, you're in 20 to 30 meters and stepping out into 10 to 20 percent meters. That just gives you an indication of what a world-class grade thickness looks like. And this is going to be really important as we start to paint the picture of why we're so excited about the Pampa Medina deposit.