Savannah Resources plc (LSE:SAV) Chief Executive Officer David Archer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the launch of a major airborne survey in block 4 “probably the most prospective area of ground in Oman today”
Q1: There seems to be a lot of fundamental momentum at your company, could you describe what’s going on at the moment?
A1: We’re a great believer in the fundamentals of the copper, we think it’s a great time to be discovering new resources and we’ve just launched a major airborne survey in Oman over our very prospective block 4 project. It’s called a VTEM survey, it’s an airborne survey that’s operated underneath a helicopter over 3,000km of flight lines will be flown and this technique, importantly, has demonstrated and proven regional success in the discovery of at least 6 ore bodies in Oman both to the north and the south of block 4. Something over 13 million tonnes of new copper mineralisation has been discovered in Oman using this technique so we’re very excited to use it and importantly I think a key element in the importance of this to Savannah is that block 4 has never had this technique applied to it before. Block 4, I believe, is probably the most prospective area of ground in Oman today for discovery of new copper mineralisation, mainly because of its geology but also because of its really excellent history and track record of copper production. It’s a very useful technique and it’s being applied in a very prospective area.
Q2: Is this a relatively new way of prospecting and relatively cheap, is that a fair thing to say?
A2: Yes exactly, although it’s a technique that has been employed for around 10 years and most recently has been successfully employed by Gentor, the company we bought. They discovered the Mahab 4 deposit, the Mahab 3 deposit and Maqail South using this particular technique and Mawarid Mining, another Omani exploration and mining company, have discovered 4 deposits to the north using this technique so it’s newish but demonstrably it’s been very successful and is a very cost-effective way of assessing the prospectivity of an area of round about 300 square kilometres which is the size of block 4 so it is a very cost-effective way of going about that. It’s a very effective way of discovering ore bodies that don’t have a surface expression.
Q3: What’s the timeframe between flying around and getting your hands on the ore if there is any?
A3: The survey itself will take 4-5 weeks to complete depending on whether conditions, if it gets very hot that will slow things down. It’ll probably be a few weeks to process the data that’s generated and that’ll hopefully identify a number of targets. We’ll then go on the ground to ground-truth those targets and we’ll probably move into the drilling of those targets in subsequent months. This is really part of a program of adding to our existing copper resourcing inventory. We’re looking at aggregating a number of deposits to the point where we have in aggregate enough mineralisation to go mining on. So still a few years away but importantly that we’re very much working to a timeline to be in production in the latter part of this decade, where we believe copper pricing conditions will be very positive and it’ll just be a brilliant time for a new mine to be going into production to deliver copper into the international markets.
