Permits in Hand, Element 29 Expands Elida Drill Campaign

Trevor Hall (0:15)

Element 29's flagship, Elida, is a copper-molybdenum silver porphyry deposit in west-central Peru, carrying an inferred resource of 321.7 million tonnes at 0.32% copper.

The project sits at a low 1,600-metre elevation with a paved road access and nearby power infrastructure. In September, the company made news when it announced that Randy Smallwood, former CEO of Wheaton Precious Metals, was joining the company's board. The company is planning an updated mineral resource estimate at either the end of this year or early 2027

Peru is a top copper country, historically ranked second globally in production. Newly-elected Peruvian president Kiko Fujimura has announced measures to speed up resource permitting. Richard Osmond is CEO of Element 29, and yes, in the periodic table, Element 29 is indeed copper. Richard, welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

Richard Osmond (1:09)

Appreciate you having me.

Trevor Hall (1:12)

Richard, let's turn to your flagship, Elida. You have drilled roughly 28,000 meters to date. Standout hole is 35 with 1,534.6 meters grading at 0.58% copper equivalent. In July, you got permission for up to 40 drill platforms, which will allow the company to expand its drilling footprint and do some systematic evaluation of five porphyry targets.

Richard Osmond (1:37)

Yeah, that's exciting.

Every time we drill holes in Elida, we learn something new and the project is still delivering some fantastic results. We put our hole 37 and 35 actually back a little bit earlier in the year, and then we decided to go back in to hole 35 based on the results of hole 37 And, you know, I mean, it's probably the, it is the longest interval of continuous mineralization that we've established a fire in the project. So, you know, lots of good stuff left to come. We're just getting started on this project, really.

Trevor Hall (2:12)

Are you going to have sufficient drill rigs with the expanded targets?

Richard Osmond (2:18)

Yeah, I mean, this year, we had budgeted or planned to do, you know, 7,000 meters of drilling. And I think we're going to come in probably a little bit closer to 12

We currently have two rigs on site. We're looking to, we're supposed to have the third rig come in this week or last week. And apparently the crew are just mobilizing now. So we should hopefully have a third rig coming in later this week, early next week. So that gives us three rigs. And I think one of the good things about Elida is that it sits on the western side of the Cordillera at a lower elevation, so we don't get the rainy season there. It's in the Atacama desert. So we can drill all year round. So actually it gets easier to find rigs and to get assay results back and things like that as we get later into the season.

So into the end of the year, going into early 2027 So there is potential as things are going well, and we have a new drill permit. We can actually get in and add even more rigs to excavate the drill, for sure.

Trevor Hall (3:27)

What are you thinking right now, just regarding the geological model and also that you're expanding out to those targets with the drill campaign? So in a video you published in July with VP, IR, Dillenberg, it's said you still haven't hit what you think is the cause of porphyry, and you may be only seeing the edge at the bottom of hole 37 and 35

Richard Osmond (3:50)

Yeah, that's right. We're seeing a little bit of some fingers of porphyry that are well mineralized. And holes 37 and 35 actually ended in pretty decent mineralization. Hole 37, the last 93.8 meters and 0.87 copper equivalent grade over, it was like 0.76 copper, plus some really good mauling and silver credits. So, you know, the system is definitely complex in the sense that it, you know, the porphyry system is generating all the agrothermal alteration mineralization within the host rocks.

We do see some intermineral porphyries, but we haven't actually found what we believe to be the porphyry that's actually driving or sort of the one that's like sort of started the system going, I guess, have generated most of the hydrolytic fracturing and, you know, bringing in that early copper band.

Trevor Hall (4:55)

Talk about the five targets that you're expanding to. How were they chosen?

Richard Osmond (5:00)

Yeah, so we've done, I mean, the footprint of the system has been, we had zones 1, 2, 3, and 4 later before.

And those are basically based on known porphyry centers that are exposed on surface. And we really just tested in around zone 1 And what we're doing is like we're trying to sort of work out from there, because that's where, you know, the known resource, current resource is. And we're trying to use vectors to continue to test that. At the same time, you know, the previous drill permit had a 20 platform limit. So we had pretty much used up the entire amount of platforms is drilling in the zone 1 area. So we just got approved for an upgraded drill permit that goes from an FTA to a DIA, which is allowed to go to up to 40 platforms. And the government actually just put out a new supreme decree, which allows us to even go to up to 60 platforms with a DIA permit. So we're looking to like, I mean, with that permit at hand, we're looking to sort of step out and do some more testing of some of the other centers within the system, like Zone 4 and Zone 3, which look pretty exciting. On the surface, you see good alteration, good mineralization, so it's definitely part of a cluster. We also did some geophysics with a large Magneto-to-Lerc survey, MT, which has been used quite a bit to explore for porphyry systems in South America.