TSX Venture Exchange climbs, Oct. 25-29

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index rose 1.59 points or 0.17% to finish the October 25-29 trading week at 950.43. Spot gold climbed US$8.50 per oz. or 0.47% to US$1,784.30 per ounce.

Los Andes Copper topped the charts, jumping $1.33 to $10.20 per share. The company announced the appointment of R. Michael Jones as its news president and CEO. The current president and CEO, Antony Amberg, will step down from the role but will retain his position as the company’s chief geologist. Jones has taken a number of large mines with values of up to $1 billion, from the discovery stage through to feasibility studies and construction decisions. A mining engineer by training, Jones was vice president corporate development for Aber Diamonds, the joint venture partner in the $1.3 billion Diavik diamond mine, from 1997 to 200o. From 2005 until 2016, Jones co-founded West Timmins Mining and MAG Silver, where he was a director. He completed discovery, joint-venture and takeover work for both companies. He has also served as CEO and a director at Platinum Group Metals. Los Andes is developing its Vizcachitas copper project in Chile, 120 km north of Santiago. Vizcachitas is a copper-molybdenum porphyry deposit. The project has a measured resource of 254.4 million tonnes grading 0.439% copper and indicated resources of about 1.03 billion tonnes grading 0.385% copper.

Great Bear Resources’ shares rose $1.06 to $4.00 per share on news of positive gold recovery test results from its 100%-owned Dixie project in Ontario’s Red Lake district. The company submitted ten 1 kilogram samples to Blue Coast Research Ltd. in British Columbia. Samples were composited from 10 to 13 metre long core intervals. All tested combinations of grades, host rocks, sulphide content and alteration styles recovered a high percentage of total gold, with a 4% range from 95.2% to 99.2%. All samples, regardless of grade, were described as ‘free milling’, indicating that the gold is not encapsulated in sulphide accessory minerals. “We selected what were anticipated to be the ‘most difficult’ mineralized domains to extract gold from the LP Fault, and were pleased to report very high gold recoveries at all grades,” Chris Taylor, the company’s president and CEO, commented in a news release. “Similar very high gold recoveries from the Dixie Limb and Hinge zones using comparable grinding and cyanidation protocols indicates mineralized material from all grade zones is likely amenable to processing through the same extraction circuits.”

Emerita Resources climbed 76¢ to $3.81. The company commenced trading on the OTCQB Venture market under the stock symbol EMOTF on October 22. The company also reported complete first assays for its first step-out drill hole at its Infanta deposit, part of the company’s Iberian Belt West project in Spain. Drill hole IN018 returned 8.2 metres grading 2.5% copper, 8.7% lead, 17.3% zinc and 223.5 grams silver per tonne, and 0.5 gram gold per tonne starting from 59.4 metres downhole. Drill hole IN014, cut 5.7 metres of 2.4% copper, 7.3% lead, 13.4%  zinc, 225 grams silver per tonne and 0.6 gram gold per tonne starting from 85 metres.The drill program at Infanta is designed to test across a 1.5 km strike length and the depth extent to at least 300 metres down dip.