C3 Metals Inc is a junior minerals exploration company focused on creating value for its shareholders through the discovery and development of large copper and gold deposits. With their flagship project located in southern Peru and holding 100% interest in 5 licences within the district of Jamaica, this Toronto-based company has a new CEO, who I have the pleasure of speaking with today, Dan Symons.
Welcome to The Market Herald.
TMH: I want to start by asking you about your history in the field as well as your new appointment as President and CEO of C3 Metals.
DS: Yes, that’s right. I joined C3 just about six weeks ago, so in a way, I feel like I’m drinking in through the fire hose with all the new information coming at me, but I was fortunate enough to do about two months of due diligence before taking the position. Originally my first role out of school was with an investor relations firm for three years, and following that, I joined a company, Romarco Minerals, in both corporate development and investor relations function and then, from there, Argonaut Gold prior to joining C3. So, my background’s more financial in nature. But part of my due diligence in joining C3 was actually engaging a geologist and having some help on the technical side. l really liked what we saw and signed up and been here six weeks now.
TMH: And now that you are settled into your new position, what are your future plans and goals for the company?
DS: I think we have a great opportunity at C3, where we have properties in two distinct jurisdictions. One is in Peru, a very well-known, world-class copper-gold jurisdiction, where we’re surrounded by operating mines today, and we’ve had some very good drill success over the last year in Peru and significantly expanded our land position there as well. Then in Jamaica, it’s not necessarily the most known jurisdiction for mining, but as part of my due diligence, I really learned a lot about it. There’s been a 70-year bauxite industry there. The last gold mine closed as recently as 2003 on partial property that we have under our control. So I view it as a tremendous opportunity to show the world that we think there’s district-scale potential there as well.
TMH: Let’s talk about your recent results coming out of phase 2 of the drilling program at the Jasperoide project in Peru. What were the highlights?
DS: In Peru, we are finishing up the phase two drilling mainly on deposit, a copper-gold skarn deposit we call Montana de Cobre. We intersected 81 and a half meters of 0.9% copper and 0.25 grams per tonne of gold. So within that was a much higher grade zone of 21 meters of point 2.8% copper with 0.6 grams per tonne of gold. So very high grade. We also extended the mineralization about a hundred meters further to the north with a hole that intersected 48 meters at 1.2% copper and 0.4 grams per ton of gold. So what we see so far in Peru and the first skarn target that we’ve been drilling is very high-grade mineralization. We have mineralization starting right at surface. We have a strike length of over 550 meters now, and it’s the first target of several on the property because we’ve recently expanded the land position from starting at about 5,700 hectares up to over 27,000 hectares now. So 377% increase in the land position and lots of targets to test in the future on the property.
TMH: Your first assays from your Bellas Gate Project in Jamaica have also come back with some copper and gold intersection, could you give us the details?
DS: Yeah, that was really exciting for us. At Bella’s gate, we have a theory that there could potentially be a large porphyry sitting underneath the center of what we call Epidote Ridge. And the reason we think that is because there are five smaller porphyries near surface sitting around it, and what we think has happened is the fluids come up, hit a rock unit and created these fingers or these pencil porphyries. The goal of this last hole is we crosscut one of these fingers, and 15 meters below surface, we found 309 meters, a very broad intercept, of 0.44% copper and 0.33 grams per ton of gold. For a little company like C3, when we hit that, we usually trade about 500,000 shares a day, we traded over eight and a half million shares, and we’re up 37% on that one drill hole. So it was a big day for us here. We have two more holes that we’ve drilled into this target that are pending assay, and we’re currently drilling the fourth hole at Bella’s Gate today.
TMH: Also, in Jamaica, you’ve discovered a large-scale Gold-Copper vein system, and this was in an area never before drilled, so how has the discovery affected you and the company?
DS: I was very lucky and fortunate that while I was under confidentiality when the company solicited me for this role, they actually made this discovery. This is very, very fresh. We first announced it to the market on September 13th. I haven’t seen anything like this, and I’ve been doing this for over 15 years in corporate dev roles, looking at assets. We have a vein swarm, which we actually announced yesterday and an epithermal vein swarm that is outcropping at surface veins 25, 30 meters wide true width. I was standing on one of them last week in Jamaica. It’s absolutely stunning. Usually when you don’t see these things anymore because if a geologist has ever stepped foot on that ground, it’s already been mined out. We’ve had rock chip samples grading up to 14.4 grams per tonne of gold and 11.1 percent copper there. This vein swarm is sitting in a four-and-a-half kilometre by two-kilometre area within a broader mineralized envelope of copper-gold-silver up an eight-kilometre by four kilometres zone. We just applied for drill permits about three weeks ago, and our hope is to be in drill testing for the first time by the end of the year. We’re very excited about this discovery.
TMH: And before we finish off today, is there anything else you would like to mention for our audience?
DS: Yeah, I just think that we’re in a good place where we’re sitting with still a decent cash balance of around 7 million Canadian. We have the money to do what we want to do. Peru is where we’re off to a very good start there in Peru, with our first target of several on a now massive land package surrounded again by major operating companies. With Jamaica, it’s a little bit unknown to the market, but we hope to put it on the map. Geologically it’s extremely similar to the Dominican Republic, which of course, hosts deposits like Barrick’s Pueblo Viejo, and what we’re seeing there and having the potential for true grassroots made in discoveries, I think, could be something that could seriously increase the value of the company in a fairly short period of time.
C3 Metals is trading on the TSXV under the symbol CCCM. You can also visit them at c3metals.com.
Thank you so much for joining me today, Dan, I look forward to hearing more from your drills in the near future.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by The Market Herald.