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Consolidated Spire Ventures is sitting on a gold anomaly with its
Spences Bridge Gold Belt Property in British Columbia
Exploration
Metals Mining
(CZS-TSXV)
Consolidated Spire Ventures Ltd.
615 – 700 West Pender Street
Vancouver BC Canada V6C 1G8
Phone: 604-662-7455
R. Brian Buchanan
President and CEO
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
Published - March 15, 2007
BIO:
R. Brian Buchanan
President & C.E.O.
Mr. Buchanan has been a Director of the Issuer since October 16, 1995. He became the Chief
Executive Officer and President on November 15, 1996. He has been an independent
business/management-consultant for over 14 years to various companies in Canada and Southeast
Asia. In the past ten years he has been involved in the structuring, capital raising and
development of numerous private and public companies.
Consolidated Spire Ventures
Ltd. (“Spire”) is a Canadian-based junior exploration &
development company active in gold & silver exploration. The Company's objective is
the acquisition and exploration of high quality gold and other precious metal projects.
At present, the Company is focusing on two projects:
the 107.9 sq km 100% owned Prospect Valley Gold Property,
located within the Spences Bridge Gold Belt near Merritt,
British Columbia, Canada and the Campanario Gold/Silver Property in Mexico.
Financings
totaling $3.2 million in 2006 provided the Company with the funds to
facilitate the summer drill programs on the Prospect Valley
Property in B.C. and to further exploration on the Campanario
Property in Mexico.
CEOCFO: Mr.
Buchanan, your company’s priority is the Prospect Valley property - will you tell us
about the property and its history?
Mr. Buchanan: “Consolidated Spire
Ventures has been looking for Canadian properties, mainly in BC, since 2002. In 2003, the
Company put together an agreement with Almaden Minerals and we acquired this property,
which is about two-and-a-half hours drive outside of Vancouver, towards the north, into an
area, we call the Caribou. A lot of people have heard about the old Caribou gold rush
days. The gold that led to the gold rush in the Fraser River and Thompson River; it had to
come from somewhere. The feeling has always been that it was, in some form, up in the
hills, but nobody had ever looked in the area that is called the Spences Bridge Gold Belt.
Part of the area that Consolidated Spire is working in has a large creek running through
it called Prospect Creek where a lot of alluvial gold had been panned out of it in the
1800’s.
The whole area that we call the Spences Bridge Gold
Belt was totally unexplored and it is a big area, now looking like it is about 300kms
long. It is now totally filled in with various exploration companies taking up properties.
We were one of the first there. We now have a property that is 108 sq kms, about
35kms from Merritt; Merritt being a small community, but it is very mining-friendly and
has a history of large mining companies working in the area. The closest would be
Craigmont that produced for years and years up in the area. We originally struck the deal
with Almaden Minerals in late 2003, and we explored what we call “stream sediment
sampling and rock outcrop sampling” in 2004. We ran recon lines through the property
and we ended up finding, in the middle of the property, an area that we are now calling
the RM Zone, and it has been of great interest. We, at that point, finished off the season
with starting a soil grid, and in 2005, completed the soil grid and found an area of
anomalous gold of about 3.5kms by 400m to 500m wide, which is large.
Our Company has always been looking for the large
open-pit, multi-million ounce prospect and this was starting to fit the bill. We
completed, in 2005, 32 trenches that contained anomalous gold up to 2.8 grams per ton.
That led us, in 2006, to do our first pass-through drilling program. The area is large, it
is 108 sq kms and we have only been looking at the center section; it is about 11kms from
top to bottom. During the 2006 drilling, we put 23 holes in the area and got better
results with each hole. Down around hole 21, we had some very nice highlights; 45.7m of
1.57 grams of gold, which is great when you are looking, as we are, at the fact that we
are high up in the system and all of the bonanza grades are probably still sub-surface and
that will come with further drilling. Our plans for 2007 are going to be exciting. We are
getting back with an airborne geophysics survey over the entire property. We will continue
sampling and trenching. Once we have done the initial fieldwork, which will start in about
March of this year, we are planning an expansive drilling program to target the areas that
we feel are the bonanza grades underneath.”
CEOCFO:
Is the region accessible in the winter?
Mr. Buchanan: “Oddly enough, so far it
has all been helicopter work in the center of the property. We have just been discussing,
with one of the logging companies up there, to expand and push one of the roads through.
Normally in that part of the world, we get maybe a foot of snow a year, because it is in
the dry part of the country. We have had this constant rain that shot across the Pacific
and through our province. Last year for instance, we ended up by springtime with about 6½
feet of snow and that is not comfortable for groundwork. You can do geophysics and those
types of surveys where the guys can walk in their snowshoes and such, but you cannot do
any groundwork. If we had targets for drilling, yes, we could also drill in the winter.
This is early stages and we need the slower periods in order to regroup in the office and
determine our best exploration and drill targets. It usually takes several months, which
is what we are involved in right at present.”
CEOCFO:
Do you currently own 100% of the property?
Mr. Buchanan: “We have 100% of the
mineral rights and there is a small NSR held by Almaden.”
CEOCFO:
Do you see the potential for other mineral targets in what you are looking at and what you
are seeing?
Mr. Buchanan: “Absolutely! We are
working just the center area and when we went through and studied the property in 2004,
there are probably about 5 areas of interest. One area we have been concentrating on is
the center where we put a couple of drills in last year. In the lower part of the
property, on the PV Zone as we call it, we have had some great rates, 43.3 grams of gold,
but we haven’t even had a chance to get back in there and explore. In the northern
section it is the same thing, it is a little bit rugged, but we will get into that area
and there is a possibility that could be an excellent target. Our 2007 airborne geophysics
will help us to determine which of those areas to prioritize.”
CEOCFO:
With all of this open space available, what made you decide to choose this property and
what attracted you?
Mr. Buchanan: “In a way, it would be
the reverse, our Company has always worked outside of North America, namely in Southeast
Asia. We were kind of getting tired of having government change their minds on things, but
the BC government has become very friendly to exploration companies. We can also raise
money very easily because we have a flow-through situation where people can write-off the
investment against their taxable income. Therefore, the climate for exploration was
looking good. That led us to look through many properties and we went through many of
them. We wanted to stay in the southern half of British Columbia where you can, once you
get rolling, work all year long, anywhere from Prince George, down. In sifting through the
properties one-by-one, we just felt the prospects for this were the best. We started out
with just two small pieces within the area where we are now and when we walked through,
that is when we increased it to 108 sq kms.”
CEOCFO:
You are not a new company; will you tell us more about the company’s history and the
key management people?
Mr. Buchanan: “The Company got its
start in southeast Asia. A couple members of the Company were originally involved in
looking for projects for other major companies through Burma (Myanmar as they call it now)
and in Indonesia, on Kalimantan and Java. In the pre-Bre-Ex days, we had a private company
that was exploring and putting together projects with the Indonesian government. In 1995, Spire
became a publicly trading entity with a very large property on the island of Java and the
joint venture partner was Aneka Tambang, the State mining company. The venture went along
nicely until the downfall of the government and it created all sorts of impossible
situations for us. Then we looked over in Africa and finally decided to come closer to
home. I have been the president for the last 12 years now. George Gorzynski is a director,
he is a professional engineer and he has a long history of exploration all over North
America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Our CFO has been with us for 12 years and recently we
added a fellow by the name of Brian Hall, who has written approximately 13 papers on
Epithermal Systems in Mexico, where we are also looking at various properties at present.”
CEOCFO:
Do you have some projects in Mexico now?
Mr. Buchanan: “Yes we do. We have one
down in the southern part of Mexico in an area called Oaxaca, the Campanario Property, and
it is also a bulk tonnage gold target. It is about 25kms northeast of Oaxaca City. Oaxaca
has been in the news since about last July where they had uprisings by the teachers and
they burnt out the middle of the city. That has hampered us going back there in the last
few months, but we are looking at having some people back on the property in the first
part of March.”
CEOCFO:
Why should potential investors be interested in Consolidated Spire and what should they
look for in the next year in Prospect Valley?
Mr. Buchanan: “The area that we are in
now is going to see, not just our activity, but activity by about 6 or 7 other companies
this year. When you get that many drills turning, somebody is going to hit something. The
area is relatively new; it has surprised a lot of people in the know, which is a testament
to what we have been finding, and every time we turn a page it says “keep on going”.
We have had a number of larger mining companies, from the States and Canada, approach us
and ask to be kept in the loop about what we are doing. We feel that we are sitting on a
gold anomaly that is 3.5 kms long and it is really showing up in our drilling. Last year
we hit our target; albeit we are in the upper part of the system, and we wanted to find
out if the target was remaining in-place on a linear situation this year, to go back and
deep drill. If all of these things that we hope come together, it will be a tremendous
boost for the value of the company, which also relates to a good reason for investors to
get involved at this stage.”
CEOCFO:
Final thoughts for our readers?
Mr. Buchanan: “I just hope that our
metals markets carry on the way they are. British Columbia always has been very much
involved in the mining sector. We just finished the Cordilleran Roundup (exploration
convention) last week. It was the biggest and best mining convention that was ever seen in
Vancouver. I think we have a tremendous 5 to 10 years ahead of us in the metals market.”
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