AZURE MINERALS LIMITED
AZS - Latin American eConference - Tony Rovira, Executive Chairman
Friday, 26 September 2008 10:30am
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AZURE MINERALS LIMITED (AZS)
ASX code: AZS
Website: http://www.azureminerals.com.au/
Industry: Materials
Principal Activities:
Base and Precious Metals Exploration
Address:
, 30 Richardson Street, Level 1,
WEST PERTH
WA
Phone: 08 9481 2555
Fax: 08 9485 1290
Executives & Directors
Mr Anthony Rovira , Executive Chairman, Managing Director
Dr Wolf Martinick , Non Exec. Director
Mr John Saleeba , Non Exec. Director
Mr Brett Dickson , CFO
Mr Brett Dickson , Company Secretary
Company Podcasts
Company ASX Announcements
Company ASX announcements can be viewed on the ASX website.
Announcements from the preceding six months are shown below.
Please refer to the relevant stock exchange if any of the above information is incorrect
AZURE MINERALS LIMITED (AZS) Events
Australia/Sydney
AZURE MINERALS LIMITED (AZS)
| Azure Enters Joint Venture with Oz Minerals | Tue, 9 Mar 2010 |
| Half Year Accounts | Thu, 4 Mar 2010 |
| Azure Acquires Historical Mining Centre | Thu, 25 Feb 2010 |
| Azure Gains 100% Ownership of Mexican JV Properties | Tue, 23 Feb 2010 |
| Change in substantial holding | Thu, 18 Feb 2010 |
| Change of Director`s Interest Notice x3 | Mon, 1 Feb 2010 |
| Appendix 3B | Mon, 1 Feb 2010 |
| Quarterly Activities/Cashflow Report December 2009 | Fri, 29 Jan 2010 |
| Change of Director`s Interest Notice x3 | Wed, 23 Dec 2009 |
| Appendix 3B | Wed, 23 Dec 2009 |
Please note: This company appears on this website as a result of its listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. Boardroom Radio does not claim any association with any company listed on this site.
PRESENTATION BY MR. TONY ROVIRA, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OF AZURE MINERALS LIMITED (AZS)
“Latin America eConference”
http://www.brr.com.au/event/51690
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008, 10:30 AM.
AZS Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for listening to the presentation of Azure Minerals. Azure is an Australian company, which is
10 exploring and developing precious and base metal projects in Mexico. In particular, we’re developing the Promontorio Project, which is high-grade copper, gold, silver project located in Northern Mexico. This talk will be presenting a snapshot of the company followed by a brief introduction as to why we’re in Mexico, some details on the Promontorio Project itself and then
15 the pathways to the future for the company. In terms of the corporate side of the company, Azure is listed on the ASX under the code AZS. We’ve got about 169 million shares on issue, and currently trading at around the 13-cent mark with a market cap of 22 million. We’ve got approximately $2.5 million in cashing at this stage in September. After our recent shareholder
20 participation plan and the capital raising, the major shareholders are Yandal Investments and Dundee Resources both with about 7-1/4% interest. Investec Bank, a resource investment bank out of South Africa with about 2.3%, and the Directors with just over 2%. We’re operating in Mexico, in particular in the northwestern part of Mexico in the states of Sonora and
25 Chihuahua, which are border of the United States. We’re operating in the northwestern part of Mexico. It’s a world-class mining province. There’s over 500 years of mining history in the country start - dating back from the pre-Spanish days in particular that they’re mining precious and base metals there on the western side of Mexico where we’re focused. Due to that mining
30 history, the government and the public and the bureaucracy are very strongly pro-mining. They see it as a wealth-generation activity for the country and for the population and that they’re very strongly promoting and supporting it. There’s a well-trained and experienced workforce readily available. There are a lot of universities in Mexico in particular about at least one in every state
35 and each of those has a school of mines within which they train geoscientists. Mexico is a low sovereign risk country, a stable democratic government, and a nice – a very nice modern mining legal system there based upon the Australian and the Canadian models. It’s simple, it’s transparent, and the security of mining titles is first class. The financial system in Mexico is
40 modern. It is a member of the NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement. There’s 100% foreign ownership allowed of mining projects and corporate tax rate of a low 28%, no government royalties, which is a very important thing and it’s a significant attraction for the country. We’ve now zoomed into the northwestern part of Mexico. On the left-hand part of the
45 slide, you can see the State of Sonora and on the right-hand part of the slide the State of Chihuahua. To the north of those states are - is the United States of America. The projects our company controls are shown there as stars. The blue stars are 100% owned properties and the red stars are properties in which we have a joint venture of 51% interest with the Canadian company called Geoinformatics. Our number one project is called Promontorio. It’s located just inside Chihuahua on the eastern side of the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain Range, and it’s approximately halfway between the caps. Hermosillo, which is the capital city of Sonora, and Chihuahua, which
5 is the capital city of Chihuahua. Hermosillo is the city in which we’ve got our base, in which we have our exploration team and administrative and support staff base there. And it’s a very similar city in terms of - as Mt. Isa or Kalgoorlie and that it is a mining-focused city, albeit much larger with a population of just over a million people. We’ve got quite a few projects in
10 Mexico, both joint venture projects and projects we owned 100%. As this slide shows, a triangle with increasing project maturity towards the apex of the triangle, so Promontorio, which is right at the top, is our most highest priority project. It’s in the resource definition stage and it’s the one that I’ll be talking about today in detail. Promontorio is a high-grade copper, gold, and silver
15 project. Historically, there’s been some exploration carried out in the late 90’s and early 2000’s in which there was some historical resource estimate calculated of just over 1 million tonnes of 4% copper, 2.4 grams per tonne gold, and 63 grams per tonne silver. Our work that we’ve been doing has been focused on that area where there was historical resource has been
20 estimated, and we’re finding that in our resource definition drilling that we expect to find something larger and better than what the previous people did. There’s also excellent potential for significant increase in resources, both along strike and down deep through further drilling. The project area is contained within three granted mining leases, which totalled 187 hectares.
25 There’s been some historical mining in the area, mainly in the 1940’s and 1970’s, in which there was production of just under 2,000 tonnes of approximately 15% to 20% copper. The ore is direct shipped to a nearby smelter, where the copper and the gold and the silver were extracted. More recently, there has been some exploration in 1995 to 2004 by three different
30 Canadian companies, total - and they carried that exploration with 118 drillholes for approximately 15,000 metres of diamond and RC drilling and from that work, mineral resource was calculated in 1997 and that was the resource I just talked about briefly, previously. Interestingly, all of the previous exploration was in the area as shown on the slide where exists Promontorio
35 deposit in a strike length of about 150 metres. Our work is shown at the mineralised structures which host that mineralisation are in fact over 850 metres in length and there has been no drilling along the northern 700 metres of those mineralised structures. In addition to that, both to the north and to the south, the mineralisation and the veins that host it disappear under some
40 surrounding cover rocks. So at this stage it’s anyone’s guess as to how far those structures trend and what is the overall size potential of this zone and mineralisation. We’re zoomed in a bit now into where the Promontorio deposit is based. And as you can see there’s a number, in fact, three vein systems, which comprised massive sulphide veins of - containing high-grade copper
45 sulphides plus gold and silver mineralisation. The previous exploration carried out drilling to depths in excess of 200 metres, but the historical resource was only calculated down to a depth of 150 metres below surface. So there are significant mineralised drill intercepts outside of the historical resource. Our work has shown that this is the case and that mineralisation does continue to plus 200 metres below surface. It is certainly open in that direction, and it’s also very much open along strike to the north and to the south. Azure’s resource drilling program, which will comprise approximately 43 drillholes for about 6,000 to 6,500 metres of diamond drilling is nearly complete with
5 estimates that that drilling program will be completed during the month of September or early October. At that stage, the data will be transferred to the international mining consultancy company, Coffey Mining, who were based out of Perth, and they will be calculating the JORC-compliant resource. We would estimate that resource calculation to be completed during the fourth
10 quarter of this year, early before Christmas. This is the photograph of one of the old workings at Promontorio. What you can see there is a large zone of quartz vein, and within the quartz vein there is a core of massive sulphide mineralisation, which has been extracted by the previous miners. This is a typical outcrop, and these sorts of outcrops are prevalent throughout the
15 area, so the mineralisation at surface is very visual. These are two cross-sections of the drilling that we’ve been doing on the area. On the right-hand side is the northernmost cross-section. On the left-hand side is the southernmost cross-section. The drillholes as shown there are the black lines with the blue bars being the mineralised drill intercepts that we have made.
20 And the red zones are the zones of massive sulphide mineralisation that we’ve interpreted from our drill intercepts. As you can see from that, the mineralisation is very continuous, down deep. There are the three main veins, the Santiago, Mina Vieja, and Veta Grande veins, and between them there are numerous other subsidiary veins which contained good mineralisation as
25 well. So the mineralisation is very continuous along strike, and as you can see there down deep as well and there’s good geological continuity within the deposit. This is a very high-grade deposit, very good grades of copper, gold and silver mineralisation. These are some of the drillhole intercepts that we’ve announced in the last few weeks and mineralisation can extend from – or up
30 from 2 metres in width up to a maximum of about 20 metres in width. These ones here, these intercepts here show the mineralisation, the copper mineralisation is grading up with the 5% copper and that seems to be pretty typical where we see the massive and semi-massive mineralisation, we’re getting very high grades of copper. Contained within that, significant grades
35 of gold and silver as well, and the depths, in which we’re hitting mineralisation, as you can see on the right-hand side of that table, are relatively shallow. A photograph of our Exploration Manager, Pat Manouge, holding some of the drill core, this is the mineralised - this mineralisation is the massive sulphides, and it’s typical of what we see within the mineralised
40 zones. So the pathway head for the company and where to from here. Well firstly, the commercial terms of the project are very simple. We’ve got the right to purchase 100% ownership of three granted mining leases, which contained all of the known mineralisation plus the extensions along the strike. There are low periodic payments that we have to make $150,000 every six
45 months for a period of four years, and then we have a buyout of $2.8 million at the end of those four years for a total purchase price of $4 million over four years. Importantly, and this is a very important point, there are no royalties, neither - no royalties to the government nor any royalties to the vendors, which is a significant plus for this project. Activities that we’ve got planned over the next few months, we’re in the process of carrying out the initial scoping study. So the resource drilling is underway and as I indicated earlier, we expect to finish the drilling sometime at the end of September or early October. The resource calculation will then be carried out by Coffey Mining in
5 the period between September through to November, and we anticipate releasing that resource calculation before Christmas. We’ve got some metallurgical testwork underway as well. Samples have been collected from the different styles of mineralisation. We have approximately 100 kilos bulk samples coming from the massive and the semi-massive sulphides and also
10 the disseminated mineralisation. So there are 300 kilos of mineralisation that is back here in Perth at the moment and metallurgical testwork is in progress. Based upon the metallurgy and the resources, we anticipate having a preview of the economic ability of this project before the end of the year. While that work is going on, the exploration will be continuing. We’ll be doing extensional
15 drilling, testing further along strikes to the north and south, and as I mentioned earlier, the mineralisation is still open on the northernmost and southernmost drilled sections, so we’d anticipate further good drill hits in those areas. We’ll also be looking to carry out geophysical surveys further to the north and south, where the mineralisation goes undercover because this
20 mineralisation consists of massive sulphides and it would be expected that geophysical survey, particularly electrical methods like EM and IP, we’ll be able to detect that mineralisation undercover. Given that all of those results are positive and we expect them to be so, we’d be starting a feasibility study on this project in the early part of 2009, and throughout 2009 and possibly
25 into 2010, we’ll be carrying out those activities that you can see on the slide. So in summary, what do we have that makes Azure a good company to (inaudible)? We’ve got a high grade - might say a very high-grade silver deposit in our location in Mexico, which is very mining friendly. We’ve got an experienced team base in-country, and that particular team made up of five
30 exploration geologists plus some very experienced support staff are giving us a significant advantage against our competitors in the area in terms of identifying and acquiring new projects and also exploring the ones that we’ve already got. Promontorio Project is one which being of compact size and very high grade lends itself to a short to medium term timeline to bring the project
35 into production and hence into cash flow, and that’s what we’ll be looking to do. Finally, the project itself has got significant untested resource potential. The resource that we’ll be announcing will be open ended along strike and at depth, and we would anticipate in future that exploration drilling we’ll be able to identify and quantify significant more resources. So we see that there’s
40 much more to come for the company. And just in closing, there’s a photograph there of the Promontorio Hill, which shows some of the countryside in which we’re exploring. It’s a hilly terrain covered with pine forests at an altitude of about 2,000 metres, a very pleasant working environment, and it’s an area in which we can work around the year. And
45 thank you very much for your attention.
INTERVIEW CONCLUDED
Contact brr@brr.com.au for more information
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