EL BANCO, Colombia – The Colombia natural resources tycoon who is powering the transformation of the nation’s historic and best-known gold mine, Frontino, has other targets.
In his sites, Serafino Iacono of Bogota tells me this week in a Medellin interview, is a small Colombia company with 300,000 hectares of concessions and other property and mineral rights. I am fresh off a meeting between Mr. Iacono, his associates and the president of that company, Colombian Mines Corp.’s (TSX: V.CMJ, Stock Forum) Robert Carrington.
Mr. Iacono, as reported here several weeks ago, says he expects Medoro Resources (TSX: V.MRS, Stock Forum)’ $180 million or so purchase of pension-bereft Frontino Gold Mine to be completed in the next week to 10 days. “The miners there, generations of them, deserve their pension benefits, and as a nation, we believe the country will see great interest in historic mines and new concessions,” Mr. Iacono says.
The land rush for producing and prospective gold and copper properties in Colombia is in its third year and starting to reach fever pitch, says Julio Benedetti, president of the Chamber of Mines of Panama and a minerals economics and chemical engineering aficionado.
Mr. Iacono, the businessman who helped fashioned Colombia’s $4 billion success in the energy field, Pacific Rubiales (TSX: T.PRE, Stock Forum), also says Medoro’s $35 million purchase of the lower half of El Marmato, a longstanding network of producing gold properties across the lower half of that mountain not two hours from the city of Medellin, is finalized.
“The money has changed hands,” he says. “The challenge for Medoro now is plotting the next steps for community participation in the accelerated output we see at El Marmato and at Frontino in Segovia.”
Accompanied by Medoro President Juan Manuel Pelaez, Mr. Iacono says Medoro this past week also won tentative approvals for an open-pit mine at El Marmato, a rich yet polluted district of gold mines and illegal tenants. Medoro, says Mr. Pelaez, intends to become a producer of well more than 100,000 ounces of gold per year by 2011 and at least triple that amount by 2012.
(El Marmato and its rich yet troubled history, along with the travails of essentially bankrupt but potent Frontino Mine, are longstanding subjects of Ticker Trax coverage.)
The investor story today, as I head to Panama with Julio Benedetti of Bellhaven Copper & Gold (TSX: V.BHV, Stock Forum), after touring a gold district in fast-growing Bolivar Department along the Magdalena River, is not Canada’sMedoro. (Please see photo of Mr. Benedetti with geologist Paul Zweng at Gomez Plata.)
Mr. Pelaez says Medoro has enough assets on its plate, including outlying portions of mines and concessions (such as Echandia) around El Marmato, to replicate the market cap miracle of Pacific Rubiales
Mr. Iacono tells me his work as a consultant and asset-builder for Medoro is almost complete. Fresh off meetings with Colombia President Alvaro Uribe, Mr. Iacono says his new venture is set on a small Colombia company whose $20 million or so market cap and portfolio of properties make it appropriate as a building block for gold and copper prospecting and production in Colombia.
“I think my partners and I realize that with Colombia seen as the next Klondike in terms of oil, copper and gold, we are ready for a new early-stage producer,” he says. Mr. Iacono, with several Canada entrepreneurs, including Fiore Capital’s Frank Giustra, just bought the historic Zancudo Mine in the historic mining district of Titiribi.
He and his partners also completed purchases this week of a copper and gold and moly concession, Alizales in Narino Department, and a small gold mine in the Rio Negro area outside of Medellin near the airport. (Please see Ticker Trax archives for more.)
Colombian Mines, a Planetary Prospect of Ticker Trax, in the category of junior Canada-traded prospectors, is among the largest holders of undeveloped gold and copper properties in Colombia. The company, with a key prospect at Yarumalito near EL Marmato and a copper prospect at El Dovio, has been trying with little success to increase its market capitalization above $20 million. President Bob Carrington on Friday 
declined to reveal how he and his board of directors are reacting to the initial efforts of Mr. Iacono to purchase CMJ or merge most of its assets with the new Zancudo venture.
Mr. Iacono tells me CMJ is one of two publicly-traded Canadian miners that his new team at El Zancudo sees as good fits in terms of property holdings, long-term Colombia experience and geological know-how.
Our Ticker Trax team is back in the country, long ago Latin America’s largest gold producer, for a fourth time since a 2008 tour of EL Marmato gold district. Recent visits allowed our subscribers to determine which miners, whether privately held or publicly traded, possess concessions with the best geological characteristics for mines that actually will produce gold within three years or less.
CMJ, or Colombian Mines, is fine-tuning drill and rock-sample data for prospects in richly dusted Antioquia department and sites near Bucaramanga and elsewhere in the nation of rolling hills, Andean landscapes and plentiful water. Mr. Carrington, a Nevada-based geologist, and his wife, Medellin native Gloria Carrington, run the company with Washington State-based geologist Nate Tewalt.
Several others in the public markets are speculative choices for investors after our Ticker Trax on-site visits. These include one, Antioquia Gold (TSX: V.AGD, Stock Forum), whose Cisneros prospect is close to Bellhaven’s Gomez Plata project.
Bellhaven Copper & Gold (TSX: V.BHV, Stock Forum) is a Canada-traded prospector looking to commercialize the gnarly tunnels and easy-oxide scrapings of artisanal miners in Colombia.
If Julio Benedetti of Bellhaven Copper is correct, Colombia’s newest generations of wildcat and, in most cases, illegal miners will lead capitalized prospectors to the nation’s richest ore bodies.
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Mr. Iacono says he also will take advantage of artisanal miners in the search for fresh prospects.
Few have stayed as true to Colombia’s natural resources promise as has Mr. Iacono. (Among them in terms of time and personal money staked to prospecting are Bob Allen of Arkansas, connected now to Continental Gold; Bob Carrington of CMJ; Georges Juilland of Titiribi-Sunward.)
On the Bolivar Department front in Colombia, Patrick Abraham, a Panama banker, and CEO Julio Benedetti look to cobble a number of standalone operating mines under the Bellhaven umbrella. “The miners get our technology, our facilities and our exploration insight. They get restricted stock in Bellhaven. We get a percentage of their haul. If after a year or so, the artisanal miners either fill our goals or we kill the deal and take back the stock.”
Mr. Iacono says he is willing to add one or two publicly-traded entities to his Zancudo mix as he builds a 100,000-ounce yearly producer of gold in, he says, the next nine months. “We are in the rehab business right now,” he says. “We want to take Zancudo and Alizales (at Narino – copper, gold and moly) and one or two others to the point where we can do well more than 100,000 ounces of gold a year with full lifestyle benefits for the country’s miners.”
Colombia right now produces about 1.2 million yearly ounces of gold at best, up slightly from a year ago but down by multiples from the late 1800s and early 1900s
Mr. Iacono has longstanding links with government officials, including members of the administration of current president Alvaro Uribe. He also has capital ties with Canada’s of Endeavour Financial (TSX: T.EDV, Stock Forum), a Planetary Prospect of Ticker Trax. He and several Canada and USA financiers, including U.S. Global’s Frank Holmes and Fiore Capital’s Frank Giustra, along with Mr. Pelaez and CEO John Hick of Medoro, met with President Alvaro Uribe less than two weeks ago regarding gold investing.
“Of course there is concern in his office that gold speculators will create something of a false economic boom,” Mr. Pelaez says. “But he (President Uribe) fully realizes that with all of these speculators coming into Colombia come jobs and capital.”
I will be reviewing Gomez de Plata near Medellin and a second fledgling project in Bolivar department – both managed by Patrick Abraham of Panama City’s Bellhaven Copper & Gold … and a third project this weekend in Panama.
(All photos by Thom Calandra. Thom owns shares of each of the 12 Planetary Prospects. He also owns Medoro Resources. Thom’s personal holdings are available for all to see on Stockhouse, the Canada publishing company. He has no intention of selling any of the 12 Planetary Prospects at present … and if he were to, subscribers would be informed well in advance of any shift in research regarding those Prospects. Ditto for Medoro. He hopes to purchase shares of Bellhaven in the open market if the stock stays below 20 cents Canadian.)
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HOLDINGS:Thom’s stock holdings are listed for all Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. It is public and free to view. He also owns recently minted gold and silver coins and shares of two private companies, one of them a nickel and platinum prospector in South Africa & DRC (Congo) operated by Robert M. Friedland. Thom does not do private placements – with the one exception this yea, he hopes, of Titiribi-Sunward in Colombia … nor does Thom accept payment in return for coverage. Thom participates in select company-sponsored and company-paid tours of mining sites after examining the properties off-site for many months and in some cases, years.
THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Traxhelps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded and was executive VP of news for CBS MarketWatch andMarketWatch.com. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom pegged $300-ounce gold as a long-term hold and dyed his hair blonde multiple times as gold surpassed $400, $500 and $600.
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