Canadian miners join forces on Brazilian copper project

Lara Exploration (TSXV: LRA) and Capstone Mining Corp (TSE: CS) signed a Letter of Intent granting the latter an exclusive option to earn up to a 70% interest in the Lara’s Planalto Copper Project.

Planalto is a 4,726-hectare property located in the Carajás Province of northern Brazi, near Vale’s Sossego copper mine and Oz Minerals Antas copper mine. The exploration licenses cover meta-volcano-sedimentary sequences and intrusives of early Proterozoic-age with IOCG-type mineralization.

According to Lara, an exploration campaign carried out over the last 12 months yielded promising results from the Homestead target, including hole PDH 18-03, which intercepted 130.41 metres between 68.05 metres and 198.46 metres downhole, with an average grade of 0.88% copper and 90ppb gold, or 0.93 % copper equivalent “CuEq”, within a wider zone of 284.71 metres from surface averaging 0.48% Cu and 48 ppb Au.

With this information at hand, Capstone -who owns the operating copper mines Pinto Valley in the US and Cozamin in Mexico- expressed interests in the project and committed to pay Lara $150,000 immediately and $ 200,000 following receipt of a drilling permit for Planalto and execution of the Definitive Agreement. Once this is done, Capstone will invest at least $1.2 million within a year of signing the deal, to drill test extensions of the mineralization identified at Homestead and scout drill other targets on the property.

To earn 49% interested in Planalto, the Vancouver-based miner has to invest $5 million by the third anniversary of the agreement. Then, the company can elect to purchase an additional 2% interest by paying Lara $ 400,000 and committing to fund a feasibility study by the fifth anniversary, to reach a 61% interest.

To get to the final 70% interest, Capstone must finance, build and operate a commercial mining operation at the copper mine.