Standing high in the mountains of Ecuador and looking down, can make you feel like a giant … or a Titan. And that is where ASX-listed Titan Minerals finds itself.
The company holds three significant projects in the underexplored South American country, where it is on the hunt for copper, gold and silver.
Titan’s flagship is its Dynasty gold project that sits 25km north of the Peruvian border and hosts a foreign resource estimate (reported in accordance with Canadian NI-43-101) totalling 2.1 million ounces of gold grading an impressive 4.5 grams per tonne. The company says its resource at Dynasty has been validated by trial mining conducted in 2019, where about 600,000 tonnes of ore was mined at a grade of 3.46g/t gold.
Dynasty is an advanced-stage exploration project in the Loja Province of southern Ecuador, comprising five concessions totalling 139 square kilometres. It includes three concessions that received Environmental Authorisation in early 2016 and which are fully-permitted for exploration and small-scale mining.
Titan has returned some impressive drill sections at the site and expects to deliver a JORC-compliant resource for Dynasty in the coming months. Previous hits at the operation include 3.05m at 16.48g/t gold and 61.66g/t silver from 142.15m, in addition to wider intercepts with 102.7m grading 1.48g/t gold, 4.5g/t silver and 0.09 per cent copper from 46.5m.
Exploration at Dynasty has outlined an extensive zone of epithermal veining across a 9km strike and more than 1km in width. Titan says there is also considerable potential for porphyry gold, silver and copper mineralisation as identified by surface-mapping, trenching and drilling at its Kaliman porphyry prospect.
The current resource takes in three main prospects – the Papayal, Iguana and Cerro Verde targets. The company says Cerro Verde hosts more than 1.1 million gold ounces of its existing resource and lies on the south-east side of the 9km corridor.
Iguana is a zone of narrow quartz veins with predominantly epithermal-style mineralisation extending through a 2.5km patch north-east of Cerro Verde. Papayal is located on the north-east edge of the corridor and hosts multiple outcropping veins that have returned solid gold and silver results, including 2.59m at 18.3g/t gold and 768g/t silver.
Management says less than half of the 9km epithermal vein corridor at Dynasty has been explored and it is now focussed on unlocking the latent value of the entire vein corridor, which it believes has significant potential to rapidly grow the resource.
Titan is in an enviable position, being the 100 per cent owner of three large-scale porphyry copper-gold and epithermal gold projects in the Tier 1 jurisdiction of southern Ecuador. We are spoilt for choice, with multiple high conviction targets, and management and technical capability assembled to discover and develop a Tier 1 copper-gold discovery. Titan Minerals chief executive officer Melanie Leighton
Titan’s Linderos project sits 20km south-west of Dynasty and comprises four contiguous concessions totalling more than 143sq km close to the Peruvian border. The company’s drilling into its Meseta gold epithermal prospect and Copper Ridge porphyry prospect late last year returned solid gold-copper results from shallow depths, with both targets open in most directions.
Management believes Copper Ridge has the potential to host higher-grade copper-gold porphyry mineralisation, with the best intercept of 308m at 0.4 per cent copper equivalent including 76m grading 0.5 per cent copper equivalent from 132m, with the hole ending in mineralisation.
Titan recently completed its maiden drill campaign at the Meseta prospect, with highlights showing 7.22m at 13.77g/t gold, 12.9g/t silver, 0.15 per cent copper and 0.38 per cent zinc from 66.28m, including a 0.92m hit grading 31.5g/t gold, 24.3g/t silver, 0.25 per cent copper from 68.28m and 0.58m reading 99.80g/t gold, 89.90g/t silver, 0.98 per cent copper and 0.31 per cent zinc.
The company’s Copper Duke project lies 18km to the east of Dynasty and covers 13 contiguous concessions totalling 130sq km. It says the operation is host to multiple porphyry intrusions associated with extensive copper-gold anomalism and quartz-hosted gold veining outcropping at surface. A geophysical survey completed in 2020 identified a corridor hosting several clusters of intrusive centres.
The exciting opportunity at Copper Duke is the fact that it is yet to be properly tested by drilling, with only four shallow holes ever probed at the site. Titan believes magnetic anomalies correspond with high-grade gold and copper geochemistry associated with porphyry-style mineralisation observed at surface.
According to the Fraser Institute’s latest annual survey of global mining companies – which delivers ratings via its “investment attractiveness index” – Ecuador is considered the fourth-best jurisdiction in South America, behind only Brazil, Guyana and the Argentine province of San Juan.
With gold maintaining its value and plenty of interest in new sources of copper throughout the world, Titan may soon become a true giant of the up-and-coming Ecuador mining scene.
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