Future Projects
The Company’s business strategy will be to start with a joint venture between Metex and an existing mining company having copper reserves, access and infrastructure advantages.
Metex has identified several mining companies and prepared preliminary evaluations of their respective reserves and comparative advantages. These copper deposits are characterized by single ownership, mining claims protection and excellent infrastructure availability (including power, roads, supplies, services and labor). The joint venture will seek to develop the pilot test and development of the heap leaching metallurgical process in stages.
The following list of mines/ projects have been evaluated by our internal/ consulting geologists for future candidates of Metex projects:
Esmeralda - Romero Mine
200K tons of copper ore at 3% Cu (sulphides) occur in the three open, 30 to 70 m. long, horizontal addits with 50 meters vertical development only; potential vertical extent exceeds 3 times that; there are also several parallel structures which makes this project 1.8 to 2M tons of ore at similar grades is the prospect of this area.
Daniela Mine - Nogales (V Region)
The Danueka Mine & Prospect is a recently discovered strata-bound copper deposit located approximately 90 Km. north of Santiago, at about 11 Km. west of the Pan-American Highway, on a 600 m (a.s.1.) mountain range, with excellent access and infrastructure.
This deposit has an important resource potential in the order of 305 million tons of copper ores @1.5% Cu or better; the deposit shows minimal oxidation and some supergene enrichment of the primary chalcopyrite copper ores. The copper is contained in volcanic and sedimentary strata dipping south and which chalcopyrite and bornite mineralization is exposed by bulldozer road cuts over a 1,500 m. extension and a minimum 70 m. vertical exposure.
The deposit is amenable to open pit exploitation which means lower mining costs than underground mining, due mainly to the gently dipping and regular strate structure. An evaluation study, including geological exploration, geophysics and drilling, is necessary to access the resource potential prior to any economic geology recommendations.
Collahuasi Mining District
The Collahuasi mining district is located in the SW corner of the Ujina Quadrangle at approximately 21° S and 68 ° 45’ W and 4,600 m a.s.1., and comprises numerous copper, gold, silver and manganese vein type ore deposits, some of which were intensely exploited in the years between 1895 and 1931. Total copper production from veins in the district is estimated to have been of several hundred thousand tons of high grade ores.
It has recently been suggested that the mineralization, present in the district, hitherto thought of as individual occurrences of various vein type deposits, could form part of a hypothetical porphyry copper type deposit lying in depth.
Nogales Mine
The host rock is a series of volcanic and sedimentary (sanstones) strata mineralized with bornite, chalcocite and chalcopyrite (some oxidation is present near the surface of bulldozer cuts and a preliminary open pit). Geologist estimates there could be 2,000,000 tons of copper ores @1.5% Cu; interesting gold contents have been detected in preliminary road cut and scouting sampling. Systematic sampling is yet to be made.
Churgue Project
The Churque district has some potential for copper “manto type” and intrusive porphyry copper mineralization estimated initially in 700K tons of ores @ 1.5-1.7 Cu (but which could reach up to 30M tons). However, demonstration of this ore mineralization potential to open a METEX operated mine and later to establish a sulphide ore leaching plant using the LIXS2 process to produce copper cathode or copper powder, calls for initial investment in the geological reconnaissance, limited rock sampling and selection of drilling sites and limited drilling.
Polulo Gold Project
The Polulo Project area is located 6 Km. W of Villa Alhué (30Km. airline S of Melipilla), itself located 75 Km. airline SSW of Santiago. Its UTM coordinates are N6,230,000 m. and E300,000m.
The geomorphology of the area consists of E-W mountain ranges controlled by E-W faults. The ore has agriculture due to the water availability in local streams; the Alhue brook crosses the area north of the veins outcrops and carries an estimated 1,000 liters/second. The high ranges rise up to 1,700 m. elevation and average rainfall is about 500 mm. /year, supplying water to the vignards and cash crops.
Its closeness to Santiago, highway access, electrical power, communications and services, universities and laboratories grant excellent infrastructure to this project. Villa Alhué is a colonial town with an agricultural and gold producing tradition.
It is represented by the numerous box works and disseminated limonites of jarositic type (after Pyrite) in the mineralized ore-shoots shown in the geological map.
There ore-shoots have widths from 5 to 40 m. and their longitudes range form 400 to 1,000 m. or more. Said “lode” ore bodies were located by GPS, compass and altimeter in 1:50,000 scale IGM topographic sheets.
The deposits have been sampled by the small scale miners which own the claims, and measured verbally reported values range from 2-15 g/ ton Au.
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