Comaplex eyes Zopilote in western Honduras

Vancouver — Comaplex Minerals (CMF-T) can acquire a half-interest in the Zopilote deposit in western Honduras. The property is held by Doublestar Resources (DSR-V).

To do so, Comaplex must spend $2.5 million over four years. It has already tabled a $300,000 budget for 2002, which allows for mapping, soil sampling, trenching and drilling.

The property occupies part of the Motagua-Chamelecon gold trend, which also hosts the Vueltas del Rio and San Andres mines, as well as Glamis Gold‘s (GLG-T) Cerro Blanco project.

Previous work at Zopilote outlined a 10.5-million tonne resource grading 1.32 grams gold per tonne.

Mineralization is hosted in gneiss and structurally controlled, and several gold-in-soil geochemical anomalies have yet to be tested. The largest of these measures 3 km by 500 metres. As part of a due diligence program, Comaplex collected 13 rock samples and 16 soil samples. The rock samples returned up to 33.7 grams gold, whereas the soils yielded up to 2.4 grams.

Meanwhile, the company intends to develop its Sustut copper project in British Columbia, having recently embarked on a feasibility study with the assistance of Northgate Exploration (NGX-T) and privately owned Procon Mining & Tunneling.

Situated only 65 km north of Northgate’s Kemess mine, the project features a zone of mineralization which hosts a resource of 5.9 million tonnes grading 1.87% copper and 6.11 grams silver per tonne, based on a cutoff grade of 0.7% copper. Of this amount, 4.2 million tonnes grading 1.94% copper and 6.35 grams silver are classified as measured, whereas 1.7 million tonnes at slightly lower grades are indicated and inferred.

Plans call for Procon to mine the deposit on a contract basis and for Northgate to process the material at the Kemess mine site. Both ores, Sustut and Kemess, would be blended together.

Kemess is a 50,000-tonne-per-day operation, with reserves (at Kemess South) pegged at 145.9 million tonnes grading 0.65 gram gold and 0.24% copper. In 2001, targeted production was 275,000 oz. gold and 30,390 tonnes copper at a cash cost of US$200 per oz. gold (net of byproduct credits).

The Sustut material would increase Kemess’s copper production by 40%, boost the grade of the concentrate, improve the quality of tailings, and reduce the amount of steel required in the semi-autogenous grinding mills.

The Sustut material is acid-consuming and appears not to leach metals into the environment.

Initial scoping studies point to a capital cost in the range of $12-14 million. Based on a copper price of US90 per lb., the internal rate of return would be 69%.

A tabular, volcanic redbed deposit, Sustut was discovered by Falconbridge (FL-T) in the early 1970s. In 1999, Doublestar acquired 13 properties, including Sustut, from Falco in return for $500,000 and 1.5 million shares plus 500,000 warrants.