Great write up today.
https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wir...er-gold-find-in-ecuador-as-drill-permit-looms
Extract:
Centaurus managing director Darren Gordon is a tall bloke but was walking extra tall after his presentation on the group’s copper/gold/nickel/cobalt push in Brazil’s well-endowed Carajás region got a good reception at RRS.
Trading at all of 1.2c for a market cap of just $32 million, Centaurus’ pivot to the riches of the Carajás after years of trying to make it in the iron core business in the country has seen it emerge with three key projects in quick (and cheap) fashion.
Making the running at the moment is Itapitanga, a nickel/cobalt laterite project close to the 307Mt Jacaré deposit outlined by Anglo American. After completing a hand-auger campaign to refine drilling targets, Centaurus has followed up with an ongoing RC drilling program.
Results have been encouraging, with Centaurus this week reporting broad intercepts from surface in the first 15 holes on the so-called Northern target area.
Best results included 24m at 0.94% nickel and 0.08% cobalt, and 12m at 0.94% nickel and 0.10% cobalt.
Significantly, within the broad intercepts there were multiple higher-grade cobalt intersections, as is the case across at Jacaré.
“Where we see it now with the market cap we’ve got compared with our peers in the nickel-cobalt space, we think there is plenty of upside just on that project alone,” Gordon said.
But wait, there is more. Centaurus also has two iron-oxide copper gold projects in the Carajas – Salobo West and Pebas.
Salobo West is 12km along strike from Vale’s giant Salobo copper-gold mine, which will be churning out metal in 50 years’ time.
Historic work on the Salobo West ground by Vale and Anglo American provides Centaurus with walk-up drill targets, but it first has to secure ground disturbance permits in what is a national forest area.
Centaurus’ long experience in the Brazilian way of doing things will help on that score. While the timing of the permits being issued is uncertain, it can be said that what is more certain is the broader industry’s envy in the ground being secured by Centaurus in first place.
Others are watching is the clear message there.
Pebas is in the same neck of the woods as Avanco’s (AVB) Antas copper mine, with Avanco itself currently the subject of a $420 million takeover bid by OZ Minerals in that group’s first entry in to Brazil.
The drill rig at Itapitanga will eventually move to Pebas, where the potential for high-grade structurally controlled IOCG mineralisation like that at Antas will be put to the test.
(20min delay)