Critical Mineral Resources CEO on striking high-grade silver as copper story expands

And so, you've got like four different things happening and you know, the more we explore Agadim all, the more things we find, but we've got that insurance of the sedimentary copper with all these other things that that, you know, that just provide upside.

Hello, you're watching Proactive. I'm joined by Charlie Long. He is the CEO of Critical Mineral Resources. Charlie, very good to speak with you. You've reported standout results including over 5,000 grams per ton silver with 10.2% copper, 2.8 grams per ton gold. What does that tell you about Agadir Maloul?

So it it tells us that we have lots of different things happening at Agadi Maloul. I think in in the beginning, we were just focusing on sedimentary copper, which is still the bread and butter, it's still our main target. But if you've been following the news, last year, we we found a Rlite with copper and silver in it, like good grades. Quite a small intrusion, but where you've got an igneous rock like that, um mineralized, there's very good potential for more of it. Um, so we have a sort of igneous target on top of the original sedimentary target.

So then we've got the silver structure which looks different. It's it's uh massive sulfides, um which we haven't found anywhere else. You know, in the sedimentary rock it's like lots of little specs of of different copper minerals, whereas this is a sort of chunky um concentration of of metal, which we call metal metal metal uh massive sulfides. Um and then we also have another target, if we go to the southeast of the property approximately nine kilometers away from where we're drilling now at zone one north, we have um copper dominant shear zones and and quartz veins which have silver in but they're more copper structures. And so, you've got like four different things happening and you know, the more we explore Agadi, the more things we find, but we've got that insurance of the sedimentary copper with all these other things that that, you know, that just provide upside.

You think this could be a separate fault controlled silver structure? How how much potential do you see to grow this new target?

I guess it's difficult now to know how big it's going to be. Um, we know that it's well, there's there's lots of things that point towards it being fault controlled. First of all, one of the holes, the one with the massive sulfide in it, 174 was literally on top of the fault, and you can see the fault in Google Earth. The second hole, 50 m away, also like the second highest silver um result we've got. So you've got two two holes next to each other, the highest grade silver by far that we've ever had, which are next to a fault, and you have the massive sulfide. So you've got, you know, a few different coincidences here. Um but how big it's going to be, how long, how continuous, how deep, we we just don't know yet. Um, but it's it's a good thing and because we've got one one of these structures here, a silver structure, we may well have others on the project. You know, bear in mind we've got I think 65 km squared of permit and mining license and that's growing with some some near term bolt-on acquisitions. So, it just means it's not just this area. Um it means there's, you know, we're hoping to find other silver structures across the property.

You're also extending the sediment hosted copper mineralization including more than 10 m at 0.72% copper. What's the latest results telling you about the main copper system?

So I think when we started, we were looking for an average of 2 meters and an average of about 1%, maybe a bit more with silver and gold credits. Um, what we're finding now is that some areas are lower grade, but they're nice and thick. So you get a lot more copper in, you know, 0.7 over 10 m than you would in um 1% over 2 meters. So, uh, it also reduces your strip ratio, reduces your operating costs. So what what we've got is um, I guess different things in different places. Some areas are higher grade, some areas are lower grade, some areas are rubbish. you know, don't don't forget that there's a lot of drilling where we just don't find anything above a a reasonable cutoff grade. Um but we have to do that drilling to delineate the good bits from the bad bits. Um, and and actually the drill holes, the silver drill holes we were drilling to the east to kind of close the mineralization so we knew how far it went and we didn't expect silver. So some of our holes are pure expiration, they find stuff, some don't find stuff, but what we're finding is we get a whole variety of um, you know, good and bad and overall it's it's going to be good.

And Charlie, more copper results due out over the next two or three weeks. What what are the key things you'll be looking for in that data?

So, more of the same. Um depending on where we're drilling, we get, you know, different grades, different thicknesses, but just we at the moment we're expanding the resource and we're infilling in areas where our resource consultants have said you need to drill a bit more here, you need to drill a bit more here. So we're kind of been guided by those, you know, those consultants. Um but we expect, you know, nice, you know, decent a mix but some decent copper thicknesses, some decent grades and it's all going to add to the resource. The resource that we we're still planning to put out end of October. I guess it could go into November, it just kind of depends, but certainly it's not going to be long before our maiden um mineral resource.

Well, I hope you'll continue to keep us updated with your progress, Charlie. Thanks for your time today.

Thank you.

That's Charlie along, CEO of critical mineral resources.