Titan poised to drill high grade projects in Ecuador
After successfully raising $14.5 million through a heavily oversubscribed placement and share purchase plan, Titan Minerals Limited (ASX:TTM) is shaping up as an impressive news-driven story with the potential for more upside after its shares doubled in the last six weeks.
Part of the funds raised will be used to revive exploration activity at Titan’s flagship Dynasty Gold Project and the nearby highly prospective Copper Duke Gold-Copper Porphyry Project in Ecuador.
By way of background, the company’s exploration and development strategy is to progress potential Tier One projects in Ecuador’s southern Andean copper-gold belt.
Dynasty is an advanced stage exploration project located in the Loja Province of southern Ecuador currently hosting a 2.1 million ounces gold foreign resource estimate averaging 4.5g/t gold. reported in compliance with Canadian NI 43-101 standards.
Titan’s strategy is to conduct a drilling campaign across Dynasty, converting the NI 43-101 resource to a formal JORC resource during the December quarter of 2020.
The drill-ready project is comprised of five concessions totalling 139 square kilometres, including three concessions that received an Environmental Authorisation in early 2016 that are fully permitted for exploration and small-scale mining.
Additionally, Titan is the operator of a gold treatment business in a well-established mining region of Southern Peru.
A centralised processing plant produces loaded carbon from a CIP (carbon in pulp) gold circuit, with feed previously averaging between 17 g/t and 24 g/t gold head grades sourced from licensed third-party operators.
Titan is cashed up to continue to evaluate additional projects in gold, copper and other commodities within Ecuador and elsewhere for acquisition or joint venture.
Near-term focus on Dynasty and Copper Duke
A key focus at this stage is ramping up exploration activity at Dynasty Gold at the Copper Duke gold-copper gold-copper porphyry project.
Titan has plenty to work with at Dynasty as indicated by the following assay results from the first 10 diamond holes, demonstrating thick intersections of high grade mineralisation.
Importantly, wider and higher grade intercepts were identified at depth, and where altered material surrounding the veins is included, management noted up to three to five times wider intercepts than previously reported.
The reported results show the presence of high grade mineralisation on strike extensions and up to 300 metres vertically below high grade veins recently mined in open pits and are located 120 metres down-dip of original vein intercepts.
Further exploration is required to assess the continuity of mineralisation confirmed at depth, and the planned 6000 metre drilling campaign has the potential to provide extremely promising data, the likes of which could be the catalyst for significant share price momentum.
These results add weight to the view of developing open pits over these extensive high-grade mineralised vein swarms that typify the Dynasty Gold Project which remains open in multiple directions.
The following provides a broader picture of the Dynasty Project, highlighting the extent of the vein swarm with drill collar locations illustrated by grade multiplied by drilled thickness values for intercepts at a greater than 0.5g/t Au lower cut-off.
Drilling at Copper Duke to follow Dynasty
Copper Duke is an early stage exploration project located in the Loja province of southern Ecuador, 18 kilometres from the Dynasty Gold Project. It consists of thirteen concessions totalling 130 square kilometres.
The focus of initial exploration programs is anticipated to generate a ranking of numerous porphyry and epithermal gold style zones of mineralisation based on scale of system for potential economic viability, leading towards maiden drill testing following the Dynasty program.
Planned exploration will include airborne geophysical surveys for high resolution magnetic coverage and surface sampling programmes extending the coverage of geochemistry across the project, with both geochemical and geophysical surveys focused on acquiring systematic data coverage over all the project area.
The 2019 trench sampling completed is an initial step in generating systematic geochemistry with further sampling campaigns planned over the next 6 to 8 months with an emphasis on providing a geologic framework for drill targeting planned to commence in 2021.
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