Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
15 Apr 2020resource reserve update▲ GoodMajor
First economic study on Homestake Ridge in British Columbia: after-tax net present value of US$108 million and a 23.6% return at US$1,350 gold, on US$88 million of pre-production capital, a 13-year life at 900 tonnes a day producing 590,040 gold-equivalent ounces at all-in sustaining costs of US$670 an ounce. The accompanying resource update - 736,000 tonnes indicated at 7.02 g/t gold and 5.5 million tonnes inferred at 4.58 g/t - carries higher grades on fewer tonnes than the 2017 estimate, with total metal roughly unchanged. Four-fifths of the ounces are still inferred.
Mapping and sampling found a new Curibaya zone a kilometre northeast of earlier work grading up to 946 g/t silver and 1.96 g/t gold, plus a loose float sample 800 metres further out at 42.6 g/t gold and 9,180 g/t silver. A float sample has no known source, so it is a pointer rather than a measurement; the mapped alteration system is now 4 by 4 kilometres.
Received the DIA environmental permit from Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines for Sombrero, covering 1,031 hectares and allowing up to 33 holes from 23 platforms at the Ccascabamba Sombrero Main target. It is not yet a licence to drill: the Inicio de Actividades authorisation, which includes a formal community consultation with Huanca Sancos, was only filed the week before.
Uranium-lead dating of five samples from diorite sills at Sombrero returned ages of 38.85 to 40.47 million years, placing the mineralisation in the same Eocene event that produced Las Bambas and extending that belt over 100 kilometres further west. Supports the geological thesis; adds no metal.
More Curibaya surface samples, up to 7,990 g/t silver, 17.65 g/t gold and 6.97% copper, extending the high-grade zone 1.5 kilometres west of the area reported in October. Curibaya has overtaken Sombrero as the company's headline story within six weeks of its first sampling.
First rock sampling at Curibaya's Sambalay and Salvador concessions returned more than 20 samples above 200 g/t silver, several over 1,500 g/t and gold up to 7.67 g/t, across a 1.5 by 3 kilometre alteration system. Surface samples in a belt that hosts Cerro Verde, Cuajone, Toquepala and Quellaveco - proximity is not a deposit, but it explains why the market paid attention.
Staked a further 8,500 hectares at Sombrero North, called Macha Machay, where stream-sediment copper runs 1.5 to 3.5 times higher than at the Sombrero Main, Nioc and Good Lucky targets. Land keeps growing while the drill permit does not arrive.
Began work at the wholly owned Curibaya project in Tacna province, southern Peru, upgrading road access before mapping and rock sampling on the newly acquired Sambalay and Salvador concessions, where historical sampling ran up to 13.5% copper, 23.6 g/t gold and 14,180 g/t silver. A drill permit application was planned for the first quarter of 2020.
First-pass mapping and grab sampling at the Ccello prospect in the southern Sombrero district returned silver up to 981 g/t from massive silica structures along a 500-metre zone inside a 2 by 1.5 kilometre alteration system. Grab samples are selective by nature; this identifies a system, not a grade.
Started the roughly 3,000-metre Committee Bay drill programme on targets chosen by the machine-learning exercise, the first test of whether that approach finds anything. No results release from this programme is in the cached record; the quarterly filed four months later describes 2,700 metres drilled and 'a new gold-bearing hydrothermal system' without quoting a single intercept.
Will drill about 3,000 metres at Committee Bay in July, testing four of the twelve machine-learning targets, concentrated on the Aiviq and Kalulik zones where 2018 holes hit sulphidised iron formation. The release also notes it is still waiting on drill permits at Sombrero, which will take another eight months to arrive.
Assays from the eight historical Fierrazo holes returned copper-gold in every hole, including 116 metres of 0.42% copper and 0.24 g/t gold, 90.4 metres of 0.48% copper and 0.05 g/t gold, and 51 metres of 0.43% copper and 0.16 g/t gold. This is the first real evidence that the 232-metre surface intercept continues at depth, obtained by re-assaying core someone else had drilled for iron.
Rock samples defined two new targets at the Homestake Ridge project in British Columbia, Bria 10 kilometres northeast and Kombi 3.5 kilometres south of the existing resource, with grades up to 11 g/t gold and 448 g/t silver. The release restates the standing resource: 125,000 ounces at 6.25 g/t gold and 1 million ounces at 47.9 g/t silver indicated, 932,000 ounces at 4 g/t gold and 21.2 million ounces at 90.9 g/t silver inferred.
Obtained access to core from eight holes totalling 988 metres drilled at Fierrazo in 2013 by a supplier to Aceros, which had been looking for iron rather than copper. Sampling that core gives the first look below the 232-metre surface channel without paying for a drill.
Extended the Fierrazo trench by a further 48 metres of 0.49% copper and 0.04 g/t gold, taking the continuous channel-sampled width to 232 metres of 0.47% copper and 0.13 g/t gold, with a 40-metre core at 1.23% copper. Still surface sampling only.
Filed an independent technical report on the Sombrero project by APEX Geoscience. Section 14 of the report, mineral resource estimates, is empty - Sombrero had no resource of any category, and the report's comparisons are to neighbouring deposits such as Las Bambas and Tintaya rather than to anything Auryn owns.
First trench at Fierrazo returned 184 metres of 0.57% copper-equivalent, including 20 metres of 1.50% copper and 0.04 g/t gold, 24 metres of 0.70% copper and 0.09 g/t gold, and 20 metres of 0.32% copper with 0.99 g/t gold. These are surface channel samples across skarn, not drill intercepts, but the width is what makes the target credible.
The machine-learning exercise produced twelve targets at Committee Bay, two of them east and west extensions of the existing Three Bluffs deposit and several under shallow lakes and glacial cover, plus a third 15-kilometre structure alongside the known Three Bluffs and Aiviq-Kalulik trends. Targets, not results.
Restarted trenching at Sombrero, beginning on the Fierrazo claims optioned from Aceros in December and moving through the Nioc, Good Lucky, Totora and Milpoc targets. The company describes Sombrero as never drilled.
Hired Computational Geosciences to run a deep-learning algorithm over the Committee Bay gold belt in Nunavut to pick drill targets - a targeting exercise, with no assays or drilling reported. Committee Bay is 300 kilometres of till-covered greenstone where conventional methods had not converted extensive high-grade surface occurrences into a discovery.
Surface rock samples at the Milpoc prospect, 12 kilometres south of Sombrero, returned copper from 0.1% to 8.45% and silver from 0.06 to 101 g/t over a zone 1.2 kilometres long and 500 metres wide. These are grab and outcrop samples from red-bed sediments, not drill intercepts, so they show a target rather than a deposit.
