Kaizen is re-working their project portfolio to focus on high-quality assets in the Ring of Fire (Image: Kaizen Discovery)

Kaizen is re-working their project portfolio to focus on high-quality assets in the Ring of Fire (Image: Kaizen Discovery)

Mining legend Robert Friedland and his protege Matthew Hornor's Kaizen Discovery (KZD:TSXV) continues to be one of the few extremely active junior resource companies. This morning Kaizen announced the sale of a non-core project and the preliminary exploration results from their newly acquired Coppermine project in Nunavut, Canada.

The results, although early-stage, are very promising.

In rock chip sampling across seven different site locations, assays as high as 23% copper were reported.

Highlights include:

  • 2.50 metres at 10.30% copper and 5.00 g/t silver
  • 6.00 metres at 4.74% copper and 23.33 g/t silver
  • 1.0 metres at 23% copper and 47 g/t silver
  • 3.60 metres at 10.82% copper and 17.11 g/t silver

"These results confirm the spectacular high-grade nature of copper mineralization in the basalts of the Coppermine District. This type of mineralization was the focus of a major staking rush in the 1960s. Since then, there has been little systematic exploration in the area. We look forward to further exploration in this fascinating geologic environment, which hosts a large number of these high-grade occurrences," said B. Matthew Hornor, Kaizen's President and CEO.

On November 12th, Kaizen announced the acquisition of Tundra Copper, a small private company, for approximately $2.5 million in shares.  In return, Kaizen gets a 310 square kilometre parcel of land that is highly prospective for high-grade copper.  In that same announcement, Kaizen told investors that they had been busy ground staking an additional 3,320 square kilometres of land earlier this fall.

Exploration geologist and mining entrepreneur Rob McLeod cheered the acquisition on via Twitter:

The rock chip sampling program was carried out by Tundra Copper's geologists in August and September of this year.

With the combined land package, totalling over 4,240 square kilometres, Kaizen believes they could be sitting on a large sediment-hosted copper deposit.

Chip sampling results and claim map for Kaizen's recently acquired Coppermine Project (Image: Kaizen Discovery)

Chip sampling results and claim map for Kaizen's recently acquired Coppermine Project (Image: Kaizen Discovery)

Kaizen, being an Ivanhoe Capital company, is familiar with this type of sediment-hosted copper mineralization.  Ivanhoe Mines' vast 43.5 billion pound Kamoa copper project in DRC is a similar type of deposit.

The rock sampling program focused around historic showings contained within the volcanics of the Mesoproterozoic Coppermine Group, not the sediment-hosted mineralization.  The company claims exploration in the area for this type of copper hasn't been done since the early 1990s.

Kaizen plans to conduct further exploration work (mapping, sampling, geophysics) in order to refine drill targets for a program in 2015 on the Coppermine project.

Under a January 2014 framework agreement with Kaizen, ITOCHU Corp (one of Japan's largest metals trading firms) has the first right to fund any future exploration programs on the Coppermine project.  As with the West Cirque acquisition earlier this year, Kaizen hopes to secure project-level funding from ITOCHU shortly.

Kaizen also announced today that it has closed the sale of its 100% interest in the Kerboule gold project in Burkina Faso.  Kaizen got shares in the acquirer (AIM-listed Alecto Minerals) worth ~$600,000 and another $1.5 million in potential future, milestone payments.

Kaizen's strategy going forward is to focus on projects along the rim of the Pacific ocean (known as the 'Ring of Fire').  With the sale of Kerboule all that remains outside of this mandated location is the Ebende project in DRC.

The company claims it is aggressively searching for base metals assets in South America.  With ~$15 million in cash on hand and four primary projects being explored on, the company should have a fairly constant flow of news.

The next milestones include:

  • Results from 1,600 metre Tanzilla drill program
  • Results from 3D IP survey and 2,000 metre Aspen Grove drill program
  • Results from 3D IP survey and 8,000 metre drill program on Fairholme (Australia)
  • Defining drill targets at Coppermine
  • Accretive M&A in South America

Animation of Ivanhoe's sediment-hosted Kamoa copper project below:

Read: Kaizen Discovery reports high-grade copper results from rock-chip sampling at Coppermine Project in Nunavut, Canada

Related: Kaizen gains foothold in Canada's tundra by acquiring private co

Disclosure: Author owns shares in Kaizen Discovery and Ivanhoe Mines. This is an opinion piece and may contain errors. Always do your own due diligence. This is not investment advice and you are responsible for your trades.