Zinc One’s Bongará project is a company defining asset

Article content

Zinc One Resources Inc. (TSX.V: Z) is a Vancouver-based company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of prospective and advanced zinc projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions. Zinc One’s key assets are the past producing Bongará Zinc Mine Project and Charlotte-Bongará Zinc Project in Peru.

Hannah Bernard: Hi, I’m Hannah Bernard. You’re watching Market One Minute and I’m here today with Jim Walchuck of Zinc One Resources. So, Jim, I want to start off by talking about the Bongará Zinc Mine Project in Peru. Tell me its significance.

Jim Walchuck: It’s a company maker. I’ve got 39 years in mining but I have never seen a project that has all the check marks on it.

Hannah Bernard: Wow.

Jim Walchuck: So, it’s extremely high grade. It’s sitting on surface. It’s in Peru, it’s a great jurisdiction. It’s got no environmental issues that we know of, but we’re checking. The community is extremely supportive and knowledgeable — and you’re in Peru, like I said, a jurisdiction that likes mining and wants these things to go ahead.

Hannah Bernard: Great. That’s so important. So what are the next steps with this project?

Jim Walchuck: Well, right now, we’re delineating out a historical resource. We want to bring that to compliance and come out with the resource probably in September, October of this year.

Hannah Bernard: Great.

Jim Walchuck: And then follow up with a preliminary economic assessment to look at the economics of it and then we’ll make a decision either to go straight to a pre-feasibility or feasibility. I think we can skip the pre-fease and go right to a feasibility, which will shorten the timeline to production.

Hannah Bernard: Great. So you mentioned the relationship with the surrounding communities, can you shed a little bit more light about that?

Jim Walchuck: I’d love to. I mean, the community is so good because it’s very rare when you go out to try to develop a project that the community’s so educated and the reason being is that it had a previous operator on the project. So, they saw the exploration phase, they saw the construction phase, the operation phase and they saw the remediation phase. So right now, it looks really nice up there. The previous operator did a pretty good job. We took it over from him, so he didn’t complete it, but the community itself really understands it and they actually understand the benefits of the mine that’ll come with it, so they’re very, very supportive.

Hannah Bernard: Jim, tell us about the recent drilling sampling program at Bongará.

Jim Walchuck: Yes, it’s quite, quite nice. When we started drilling off our program, we started sort of on the north side with a little portion called Bongarita. And then we moved over to Mina Chica and of the 1.2 million historical resource, the 1.2 million tonnes, only 50,000 of it was represented by Mina Chica. But Bill Williams, he was convinced that there was more there for various reasons, typically because there was no drilling done on it. It was just pit sampling and channel sampling, so when he started exploring, we started finding a lot more. The intercepts were very deep and extremely high-grade, so we were very keen. We think Mina Chica’s going to become a major portion now of the overall project.

Hannah Bernard: And you mentioned the timeline to production, where are things at with that?

Jim Walchuck: We’re not an exploration company, we’re a mine development company. We like brownfield projects that can be brought into production in short order. That is the goal of our company, in good jurisdictions in North and South America. And this one fits all the bills, so what we’re hoping to do is if we can get the feasibility done and get started. That would probably take up most of 2019 and then go into construction in 2020. So that’s kind of the time frame that we’re looking to target.

Hannah Bernard: Well, it sounds like a lot of great news coming from you guys. Jim, thanks so much for being with us.

Jim Walchuck: Thank you.

This story was provided by Market One Media Group for commercial purposes.