Only at the beginning of the month, gold and copper explorer Sankamap Metals (CSE: SCU / WKN A3ESGU) announced that it would accelerate the exploration and development of its promising projects on the Pacific Ring of Fire – including by bringing a second drill rig onto the property. To that end, it intended to raise up to CAD 5 million. However, market interest was so strong that the company, led by CEO John Florek, has now received gross proceeds of more than CAD 7 million!
As recently announced, Sankamap raised CAD 7.409 million by issuing 21,168,576 units at a price of CAD 0.35 per unit. Each unit consisted of one common share of the company and one-half warrant. Each whole warrant, in turn, entitles the holder to purchase one Sankamap share at CAD 0.55 for a period of 24 months from issuance.
Sankamap CEO John Florek also views the strong interest in the significantly oversubscribed placement as a vote of confidence – in the team, its strategy, and the projects.
Sankamap is focused on the discovery and development of high-grade copper and gold deposits in the Solomon Islands, which lie along a geological trend that hosts several large copper-gold deposits. One example is the Lihir mine of industry giant Newmont, which has a resource of 71.9 million ounces of gold. Sankamap now intends to initiate the first, highly anticipated drilling on its Kuma project in the near term.
Kuma and Fauro: Historical results and drilling plans to be advanced in parallel
For Kuma, Sankamap describes an underexplored and largely untested porphyry copper-gold system. Historical rock samples there have repeatedly returned gold values of more than 0.5 g/t. The company highlights one sample in particular with 11.7% copper and 13.5 g/t gold.
On Fauro, Sankamap primarily points to the Meriguna target area. Historical trenches there reported intervals of 8.0 metres grading 27.95 g/t gold and 14.0 metres grading 8.94 g/t gold. In addition, the company cites samples with historical peak values of up to 173 g/t gold. Furthermore, Sankamap Metals reports its own more recent sampling in the Kiovakase target area, which returned multiple high-grade copper values of up to 4.09%. Earlier, limited shallow drilling is also cited as an indication: 35.0 metres grading 2.08 g/t gold.
If Sankamap succeeds in confirming its exploration thesis for Kuma with the very first drill hole, this could, in our view, take the company to an entirely new level. And with Fauro, it also has another hot iron in the fire.
