Alturas Minerals Corp

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While local knowledge is a powerful commodity for any exploration company, it is something that Dr. Paul Pearson, CEO and President of Alturas Minerals Corp, well understands.

“We are a Peru-based junior company that listed in Canada. Unlike many junior companies that come from North America or Europe and look for projects in places like Peru or Chile or the like, we started here and between our three founding directors we have decades of experience in this country” he explains.

“Miguel Cardozo, Augusto Baertl and I were the founding Peruvian directors of Alturas. We started the venture back in 2004 here in Peru and we got listed in April 2006 out of Toronto. In June 2008 we also listed on the Bolsa de Valores in Lima, which makes us one of the dozen or so junior miners listed here on this very dynamic exchange”

Chairman and Peruvian national Dr. Miguel Cardozo led the discovery on the Yanacocha gold district - now Newmont Mining Corp’s +50 million ounce gold deposit and still the largest in Latin America.

“Our other founding director, Augusto Baertl, led the construction of Antamina for five years and oversaw the start-up of that project, which is now one of the world’s largest copper and zinc mines” Pearson says, himself a dual citizenship holder with Peru and Australia.  I’ve also been involved in a number of discoveries within Peru, including the Sinchao copper-gold deposit in northern Peru.

“We really feel that this is our backyard and we have that very strong in-country experience package that represents a significant corporate advantage.”

FLAGSHIP PROJECTS
“We have 11 projects in the portfolio including six gold projects – two of which are drill ready and three copper/gold projects – two of which are drill ready” Pearson says.

“Our flagship one is a copper/gold project called Chapi Chapi in southern Peru. We have two target styles within that project, including copper-gold skarns and breccias, as well as disseminated gold in quartzites. We have tied up an entire mineralized district situated in the world-class copper/gold belt of southern Peru.”

“We have very strong indications of surface copper-gold mineralization over large areas, including highly encouraging assay results in trenches (one trench of 18 meters assaying 1.58% copper and 2.84 grams/tonne gold, and another trench of 18 meters assaying 12.7% copper and 0.13 grams/tonne gold). Further west, we have obtained encouraging drilling results in our 2007/2008 drilling program of the copper-gold breccias and now we have defined a number of exciting new geochemical targets which we have yet to drill” Pearson says.

“We’re currently looking at raising money in the near future to fund the Chapi Chapi drilling program, which we expect to comprise 4,000-5,000 meters. “
Other projects include Ccaccapaqui, also situated in southern Peru.

“It’s an epithermal gold project with very strong gold and silver values on surface and outcropping over an area in excess of 1.5 by 0.5 kilometres and it’s ready to drill” Pearson explains.

“Another gold project we have is Callejones on the northern Peruvian coast. It is a large volcanogenic massive sulphide system with gold in oxides close to surface intersected in historic drilling in the 1990´s by another company and tantalizing indications of copper/zinc massive sulphides at depth. Gold intersections in the historic drilling included separate drillholes with 48.0 meters assaying 0.69 grams/tonne gold and 19.0 grams/tonne silver, 11.0 meters assaying 2.31 grams/tonne gold and 11.5 grams/tonne silver, 33.0 meters assaying 1.40 grams/tonne gold and 23.9 grams/tonne silver.”

And these are not the only stars sharing the gold and copper limelight at Alturas.

“We also have La Divina and that’s a low sulphidation gold project in northern Peru with some interesting high grade gold incepts reported from historic drilling by Anglo Gold in 2002. There’s an intercept there of two meters assaying over over 21 grams per ton gold that we have yet to follow up” Pearson says.

“It´s also worth highlighting one of our polymetallic projects, Huajoto, which is a gold/zinc/copper/rare earth play. We’ve already done some drilling there in 2008 and cut some long intervals of replacement zinc mineralization – over 100 meters at 1.64 percent zinc including 4.4 meters assaying over seven percent zinc. Interestingly, we also have a strong rare earth signature at Huajoto which we want to follow up on, and some separate epithermal gold targets which we haven’t drilled” Pearson says.

FUTURE POTENTIAL IN PERU
“We are focused on gold and copper. These are the commodities that we see potential for future strong price appreciation” Pearson stresses. This is the key aspect of their plans going forward today.

“We plan to advance the drilling of Chapi Chapi and test some of the very strong gold and copper-gold targets we’ve defined there and hopefully extend the rich surface mineralization into the third dimension. We’re also working on partnering on some of our projects and we expect to be announcing some arrangements during the course of this year. We have limited funds and we see that sharing risk is an important approach in effectively exploring the many exciting projects that we have” Pearson says.

“In the long-term, funding permitting, we want to move towards acquiring more advanced projects and also we’re looking at the possibility of expanding into other Latin American countries.”

The support system cultivated by the local knowledge of the three Alturas founders is quite enviable, but Pearson pays homage to the mining environment of the country too.

“We are searching in world-class belts in a world-class mining country. Peru is an emerging economic powerhouse with great mineral potential, and a very supportive legislation and government, so there’s no ambiguity about those things” he says.

Now with their goals firmly in place, an excellent grasp of their exploration environment and decades of in-country knowledge, Alturas Minerals look set for a very exciting year.