Barry Fitzgerald this morning:“On the subject of big...

Barry Fitzgerald this morning:

“On the subject of big discoveries, Sunstone (ASX:STM) managing director Malcolm Norris reckons the company could have two on its hands in Ecuador.

They are the high-grade Alba gold-copper porphyry discovery in the south and part of the broader Bramaderos system, and the El Palmar porphyry system in the north.

Norris would have a fair idea too as in his pre-Sunstone days, and after 23 years with WMC (now part of BHP), he was intimately involved in the discovery of the monster Tujuh Bukit porphyry in Indonesia (now owned by Merdeka Copper), and SolGold’s monster Cascabel porphyry in north Ecuador.

Trading at 7.6c for a market cap of $167 million, the company is starting its move towards making maiden resource estimates for the projects, with Alba’s potential in particular coming into sharp focus in recent times.

Last year’s high-grade hits (in gold-copper porphyry terms) at Alba have just been followed up with geophysical work that indicates it continues from surface outcrops to a depth of more than 1km.

“We already knew that Alba contains gold-copper grades equal to or better than many of the world’s gold-copper porphyries. And now this geophysical survey indicates it also has substantial scale, putting us on track to confirm it is a very significant discovery,” Norris said.

Little wonder then that drilling is being stepped up at Alba.”