Georgian Mining Corp (LON:GEO) Managing Director Greg Kuenzel caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the significant drill intercepts at the Kvemo Bolnisi project, what the next steps are and what investors should be looking out for.
Q1: Now Greg, Georgian Mining Corp have just announced near-surface intercepts from the first 3 drill holes at your Bolnisi project in Georgia, can you talk us through the highlights of this news?
A1: We started just before Christmas, a 10,000-metre drill programme targeting an initial 3-5 million tonne resource at Kvemo Bolnisi which is our priority target within our 860-square kilometre licence area in Georgia. Kvemo Bolnisi was chosen as a target for a number of reasons, a lot of historic work, very prospective, but importantly it’s only 7 kilometres away from our partner’s operating copper mine, the Madneuli mine, which has a float plant with excess capacity. We also have access to a gold heap leach as well which is important because at Kvemo Bolnisi we have three targets at the moment, we have a copper-gold sulphide and then 3 gold-oxide targets. These results that we’ve put out this morning are the first three drill holes from the copper-sulphide target and we are obviously very pleased with these results, the highlight being KED-11 at 114 metres at 1.7% copper and importantly, close to surface, that result is from 18 metres so that’s a very exciting result for us, the second hole 28 metres at 1.6% with a decent gold credit in there of 0.8 grams per tonne. So, the first 3 out of a circa 50-hole drill programme, a very good start and I think very exciting for the fact these results weren’t included in the initial resource that was announced a couple of weeks ago, so they’ll go a long way to helping increase and improve that resource.
Q2: Indeed, and gold obviously being a bonus there?
A2: Yes, definitely.
Q3: Can you talk us through the next steps and the timescales that are involved with those steps?
A3: Well, as I said, we’ve got three main targets, these results today on the copper-sulphide target, so we’ve already drilled another 17 holes on the copper sulphide, half of those are currently at the lab being assayed, the other half are being prepped in-country and will be on their way shortly, if they aren’t already. We will then continue drilling these results along with the next lot of results which will be used, as I said, to upgrade the resource, we’re targeting an initial 3-5 million tonnes which, although modest, has the potential to provide us with 3-5 years’ worth of production utilising the capacity at the float plant, so although modest is quite a significant target given we’ve got no capex or mineral infrastructure costs. I guess it’s also important to point out this is a much larger target, we have an exploration target at Kvemo Bolnisi of grade about 50 million tonnes given the similarities we’re seeing between it and Madneuli so a very scalable project and one that we hope is going to be able to generate some revenues for the company in the short-term as well.
Q4: In terms of new flows then, what should investors be looking for over the coming months for Georgian Mining Corp?
A4: We’re obviously going to have the additional drill results so the 17 that are already completed plus those still being undertaken, we’re also drilling the gold-oxide target as well which we announced a separate initial mineral resource on that. That’s quite an exciting one as well because we’re seeing, similarly to what we announced last year, at-surface high grade gold-oxide capping which again presents a fantastic opportunity for the company as far a short-term production because we have access to our partner’s gold heap leach processing plant. So, we’re going to have drill results on copper, drill results on the gold, upgraded resource and then that’s all going to lead on to finalising the economics and the agreement with our partner for offtake which we’ve decided to be starting on and look forward to updating the market in the short-term.
