Welcome to the Market Herald “Top Line” CEO interview. I’m Brieanna McCutcheon.
Tocvan Ventures (CSE.TOC) is a mineral exploration and development company which has created shareholder appreciation as its top priority. The company is earning into two projects, their flagship Pilar project and the El Picacho project in Mexico’s Sonora state.
Brodie Sutherland, President and CEO, joins The Market Herald for an informative interview on the company’s progress and plans.
TMH: The company has two main projects. The pilar gold project and the El Picacho Gold project. For those who don’t know, can you quickly explain the projects?
Brodie Sutherland: I’ll start with our Pilar project. This is a project that historically had seen over 15,000 meters of drilling completed on it. The target there is a near-surface, low sulfation epithermal gold-silver system and what really got our attention about Pilar was the fact that it looked like it was open for extension towards the Southeast. We felt that it likely wasn’t properly evaluated in terms of potential size and what we call our main zone. We’ve spent over the last two years drilling there, expanding on that and discovering new areas of mineralization which has been extremely exciting. For our Picacho project, this one we’re really just getting started with, we acquired it last year. It’s got a lot of excitement attached to it. It’s very close to a producing gold mine. The San Francisco open pit is run by Magna Gold. It’s 18 kilometres away. We have very similar geology and structure and great indications of mineralization at surface. We’ve defined six kilometres of prospective trends there, so we’ve got a big area to explore, and we’re excited to get started there.
TMH: Recently, the company completed a surface evaluation of the San Ramon Prospect within the El Picacho Gold-Silver Project. There is a lot to note, but are you able to sum up some key points from this?
Brodie Sutherland: Yeah, absolutely. So San Ramon is one of several prospects that we have. right now, it’s the highest on the list for drilling. And really what we see there is there’s a 500 meter by 500-meter area that we think is an excellent target, and the reason for that is we see high-grade mineralization at surface extended over that area. We have outcropping, a shear zone that’s parallel to a big regional thrust fault, which is thought to be the main conduit for a lot of this mineralization. That shear zone in two different places was actually historically mined. So there are old underground workings, one that goes 90 meters underground along this shear zone and sampling from that has returned between 0.3 to 22 grams per tonne of gold, and if you average across the drive, it’s about five grams per tonne gold. So great indications, we’re seeing high-grade mineralization. In 2012 another operator had done some reconnaissance drilling at San Ramon – three holes, all three hit memorization intersecting multiple shear zones and although they didn’t hit the high grade that we see in the underground drive, we think there’s an excellent chance for that, and that’s why we think it’s such an exciting target to start with.
TMH: When will you be looking to do follow-up drilling on this site?
Brodie Sutherland: This is our next priority for drilling, so we’re just coming out of the rainy season in Mexico now, and we expect to be drilling there in October.
TMH: What about the Picacho Property makes you believe it’s an opportunity waiting for the discovery of a multi-million-ounce district?
Brodie Sutherland: It’s hosted within the Caborca Orogenic gold belt, which hosts some big, big deposits. You’ve got La Herradura run by Fresnillo, over 10 million ounces of gold. San Francisco, right next to us, has got 3 million ounces of gold contained. We have very similar geology and structure. We’ve got a big area, 24 square kilometres. Like I mentioned, we’ve got six kilometres of perspective trend, and those trends are real, they’re from surface sampling and from an extensive network of artisanal workings that date back upward to a hundred years, and there we see underground shafts going after high-grade mineralization, and that gives us a lot of confidence for that this system continues at depth and we feel that it just needs to be tested to prove that.
TMH: How does Tocvan stand out from other mining companies?
Brodie Sutherland: I think there are a few things there. The first is our share structure from our start, that’s been a focus for us. So we’ve been around for three years, got 36 million shares outstanding, and we are very aligned with our shareholders in creating value for them. We’ve got an excellent team in Mexico. We’re very proud of our team and of the fact that they’re all from Sonora. I’m really the only outsider on the technical side, and I think we’ve got a lot of potentials. We’ve got Pilar, which has seen a lot of history behind it but we’ve kind of breathed new life into that project, revitalized it, and next steps there, we feel that we can move it towards production with the bulk sample, and that’s what we’re going to be doing next along with continued drilling, and with Picacho, it really just gives us a one-two punch for that region. It’s got a lot of upside to it, and we’re really just getting started. So a lot of excitement ahead.
TMH: As the saying goes, we’re only as good as the people we surround ourselves with. What is so special about the team you work with?
Brodie Sutherland: For us, it was important to build a team that is from Sonora, that knows Sonora inside out, and that really starts with the Rodrigo Calles-Montijo, he’s our chief geo, he helps coordinate everything that we do down there. He’s got over 30 years of experience working all over the world, but he’s come back to Sonora and built a team around him. Then we’ve got Isaac, he’s our project manager. He’s got over 15 years of operating in Mexico. He’s from Hermosillo. We work closely with the university there, we worked closely with Dr. Raul Lugo. He’s a structural geologist there and really just gives us a lot of strength in terms of our understanding of the structure and what we can do to maximize our exploration success. I think it’s about looking towards the future, and we’ve got a lot of young geos that have worked for us, but very fortunate to have a recent grad Renée who’s from one of the local towns that we operate out of and good to see her being able to work close to home.
So it’s really important to us to have a team that is from Sonora, and we’ve done that, and we’re very proud of them.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Brodie, we look forward to hearing more about your progress in the future.
For regular updates, visit https://tocvan.com/. TOCVAN Ventures trades on the CSE under the symbol TOC.
I’m Brieanna McCutcheon for The Market Herald. Thanks for watching.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by The Market Herald.
