A core drilling rig and a reverse circulation (RC) rig are working on the property and the goal is to increase mineral resources by extending the known mineralization into new areas. In February, 2018; when Stockhouse covered TriStar in-depth, the Company had taken its resources to a five-fold increase on its previous resources, with indicated resources of half a million ounces of gold at a grade of 1.8g/t and inferred resources of one million ounces at a grade of 1.2g/t. Further potential remains in large under-explored areas of the project.
TriStar Gold Inc. (TSX.V: TSG) "From the Floor" - PDAC 2018, Toronto from Stockhouse Publishing Ltd. on Vimeo.
TSG has drilled just over half of its strike length of the shallow open-pit target on the Castelo de Sonhos plateau. The Company is also working to establish continuity between the four different “Esperança” zones (West, Center, East and South) that have been identified along this mineralized trend.
More details will be released as the Company publishes its drill results for the strike length, anticipated around May. Until then, Stockhouse Editorial has a quick preview of what investors can expect from Nick Appleyard, TriStar CEO.
- What is the Company expecting in terms of results at this early stage of drilling?
The aim of this year’s drilling is to further expand the resource both through extending known areas of mineralization, and drilling into under-explored areas particularly in Esperança East. We anticipate drilling results to be strong in areas adjacent to the current resource footprint. Geological data leads us to believe that Esperança East could be the bridge between the two resource footprint areas at Esperança Center and Esperança South, and we are hopeful that results in Esperança East will further confirm this.
- Can you offer newer investors a rundown of the work done at CDS so far?
CDS is an area that has long had small-scale artisanal miners using manual methods. TriStar undertook early small drilling campaigns from 2011 to 2014 with encouraging results and published a resource in 2014. In 2015, new management reviewed available data and geology and recognized that the 2014 mineral resource was only a fraction of the potential of CDS. With additional funding, more extensive drilling programs were undertaken in 2016 and 2017, confirming this greater potential, and a much larger resource was published in 2017. Drilling continues this year with management optimistic that the resource has the potential to grow even further.
- What is the Company’s plan for the rest of the year with regards to the other half of the strike length?
CDS still has a large under-explored highly prospective area where we have informal mine workings, gold-in-soil anomalies and the favorable conglomerate host rock, so ideally, we would like to drill all of those areas this year. We plan to follow the drilling with an updated mineral resource estimate and a scoping study (an NI 43-101 preliminary economic assessment).
- In this strike length, TriStar found indications of grades of 1.8 g/t Au, is this consistent with what was expected?
The grade of 1.8g/t Au is the grade for the Indicated category of our resource. Indicated resources are a category where the estimate has been made at a reasonable level of confidence, which makes them more reliable than the Inferred category. Grades for intervals included in the resource vary, with some intervals being much higher grade and some lower. This overall grade is in line with our expectations, perhaps even a little higher, as we had undertaken extensive geostatistical modelling in 2016 to guide our exploration.
- In a recent interview from PDAC, you mentioned that the CDS project is gaining attention, especially from major companies, how have you seen this attention grow from the industry?
Larger mining companies no longer undertake grassroots exploration and look to juniors to identify and prove up potential projects to replace their depleted reserves. However, the size of the resource needs to be large enough to make it worth their while and that usually means over a million ounces. Our resource is now of a size that starts becoming of interest to larger companies, and as a result we are seeing more interest in what we have achieved so far and where this project is heading. Since publishing our updated resource in December of last year we have seen a significant increase in interest.
- When we last spoke in our previous feature, TSG was working toward completing $3 million financing, what is the timeline on this?
The $3m financing was completed in January 2018, and we immediately mobilized two drill rigs to site for the current drill program, intended to further increase the resources. Our aim is always to aggressively use our shareholders money to add value to the project and the company.
- TSG is targeting to have a seriously detailed campaign at Esperança East, what makes this zone special and what do you expect to find there?
Esperança East is geographically positioned to be the link between the two current resource footprint areas at Esperança Center and Esperança South and is approximately 3km long. It has similar highly prospective soil anomalies and other geological indicators to the areas where we have seen good drilling results. We have just completed surface reconnaissance, mapping and sampling to better identify targets in this area. The area has steeper terrain and thus is more difficult to access, and many parts are best drilled with a man-portable rig to minimize land disturbance. In the current campaign we are drilling some holes in this area to gauge potential and will await results to determine the best approach for further drilling of Esperança East.
- Does Castelo de Sonhos have similarities with any other successful projects?
Both Jacobina in Brazil and Tarkwa in Ghana are geologically very similar to Castelo de Sonhos and both are or have been very profitable mines. It helps us enormously to have these successful analogous deposits to learn from. Even though every deposit is different, the similarities, especially to Tarkwa, really make us think “well if Tarkwa is so profitable CDS could be as well?”.
- Can you provide investors with an updated look with respect to TSG’s development over the next five years?
Our business model has always been to identify, acquire and develop precious metals projects that have the ultimate potential to produce at least 150,000 ounces of gold a year for 10 years and for us to have multiple projects in multiple jurisdictions. This business model is designed so that the intermediate and large producers needing to replace their reserves will drive the value in the projects that we develop. So, over the next five years look to see us identify and acquire new high potential projects, but also, we hope to see the continual interest from majors in either acquiring the projects from us, or possibly acquiring the company. As long as our shareholders see an increase in value, either option is attractive.