COULD there be something big brewing in the back blocks of Brazil? Very early days but low profile ASX-listed BBX Minerals could be onto something very tasty indeed around the Apui region of the Amazonas State in the northern part of the massive South American country.
Last month BBX released early results from its first ever drill hole into the Plato target at its Juma East gold and copper project, in the process sending demand for its stock soaring – shares that were changing hands for A1.5c a week before BBX reported first news on its drilling, reached 14c 15 days later.
What got investors up and about was a 55m long interval (to 120m down hole) containing visible gold.
BBX’s visual assessment of the core also suggested the interval could be true width.
One well versed, non-BBX geologist told MNN; “BBX could be onto something amazing in Brazil … quality people with in-country experience and great drill core from first hole with visible gold all through it … from rags to maybe riches, assays pending …”
Still, another geologist contacted was less impressed, suggesting it was a tough exploration gig given a “tricky style of mineralisation in porphyry and associated veins and feeder zones”, while a third geologist’s quick-fire assessment was “visible gold over wide intersections is a very good thing”.
Assays are the key unknown.
BBX non-exec director Will Dix said the company had been told results could be available by the end of next week, with SGS doing the assaying.
He acknowledged there was now “a lot of expectation” about what BBX had, while cautioning “it’s very early days”.
“We are flying blind (until we have assays),” Dix said, with the company needing to match the geology with the grade to get a fix on the situation.
“But clearly it is pretty encouraging.”
BBX began public life on the ASX as a “barter exchange” business in 2005, before being re-structured and refocused as an exploration company in Brazil around the turn of the decade.
The company got off to a tragic start in the country when in mid-2012 then-chairman and managing director Paul Page died while jogging in Rio de Janeiro.
Months earlier BBX had secured ground at Juma East, with a gold rush to the region having occurred five years earlier.
At the time the cost of the four properties covering an area of about 56,000 hectares was $US500,000 per property, with payments spread over six years.
Former Australian major Western Mining set up a greenfields exploration program in the region back in the late 1990s targeting iron ore, copper and gold.
Western Mining’s former country manager in Brazil Mike Schmulian is BBX’s chairman, with Schmulian having more than a quarter of century’s experience in this part of the world.
Systematic first pass work has generated the targets that BBX is now drilling,
This first hit was made in “Breccia pipe 3”, one of ten pipes identified by an airborne geophysical survey.
Jumping a long way ahead of the current story it will be interesting to see what permitting (including environmental) challenges might be faced by BBX should its drilling ultimately reveal the prize being sought.
But that is a long way off and for now it is all about the assays.
Shares in BBX were trading this week at levels around A14c, capitalising the company at nearly $27 million.
BBX is currently far from flush with cash – though investors that participated in a private placement in early October raising $148,000 early last month are, given they invested at a price of 1c per share – but the small placement and convertible loan facility of $250,000 (from some mob called Drake Private Investments, with the notes also having a face value of 1c), is underpinning the cost of the current drilling.
And the cost of the assaying!
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