Avrupa Minerals (AVU:TSX) is a prospect generator focused on Europe.

Prospect generators will stake or acquire claims then option them off to partners who are required to spend money on exploration to earn an interest in the project.  The prospect generator business model is fundamentally sound and you now have dozens of junior mining companies operating this way.

Avrupa took the junior mining world by storm in December announcing a drill hole of  122.6 metres of 6.2 grams per tonne gold in Kosovo. The market quickly realized that AVU drilled the hole right down plunge and could only end up with 15% of the project if the partner (Byrnecut International Limited) earns in fully. Downplunge or not, this is still a highly compelling intercept. As well, the company has other projects of interest elsewhere in Europe.

CEO.ca caught up with Mark Brown, a director with the company at the AME BC Roundup 2015 conference for a short interview. Mark showed us the high grade drill core from the discovery and told us how the deposit was initially found.

Mark Brown, Director, Avrupa Mineals, AME BC Roundup 2015 transcript:

Well the biggest challenge we probably have today is similar to many other companies which is on the financing front. The reason this has been a little bit easier for us this year is because we have made a couple discoveries.

The financing side of the stock market side we don't believe is reflected in the true value of the company but that is a common problem that many companies have these days.

The model we follow calls for joint venture partners. It has been difficult to get more joint vent partners lately.We are working quite hard to get more joint venture partners. We have three right now and they can be difficult to work with at times but we quite like our current partners and we are looking to add more.

This drill core is from holes we drilled recently in the fall of 2014 at a project in Kosovo on a project called Slivovo. After 3 holes of not drilling anything. In the fourth hole we hit 122.6 metre intercept of 6.2 g/t grade .Very high grade over a long intercept but we did drill that hole right down plunge so then we came back and we drilled across.

This is from the first hole.

The second hole here #5 came across it and we hit 12 m of 12 g/t gold.

The geologists in Kosovo were walking in a farmers field. The farmers pointed in direction of some rocks... areas where plants could not grow very well. It was a gossan outcrop which has a lot of  this red rusty rock which has a lot of  iron in it and sulphides.

That's the thing geologists look for. They sampled the surface trenches and came up with some good gold numbers. Then we start drilling in the fall. We drilled some holes.

This piece of core is about 57 g/t gold one of the first holes they hit. Which was unexpected and they were trying to figure out the geological model.

Looking at the faulting they figure there is a lower grade porphyry type deposit which can be high grade gold and copper and some kind of epithermal overprint.

These two different events happen together and maybe that is why there is high grade gold there.

This is very unusual and they are still trying to figure out the geological model. When a geologist finds a deposit they try and model. These two different events happened  together and maybe why it happened together.

They only have five holes into this thing so they are still trying to figure it out. They look all over the world at comparables. This high grade gold and a little bit of base metals is a little bi unusual.

They are very excited and have a lot more work to do. We will be doing a lot more drilling coming up and that will tell us the story moving forward.