We would like to draw your attention towards QRS Capital Corp. (QRS.V – qrscapital.com). The company closed two property transactions last month, wherein they optioned two Chilean copper and gold assets.
It’s important to note that the group behind QRS Capital is the same people who floated CuOro Resources (CUA.V) and Tembo Gold (TEM.V), two recent success stories. We are fully confident they are the right people to lead QRS forward.
The Vista Hermosa Copper Oxide Property
The flagship property for QRS is the Vista Hermosa copper oxide project that the company signed an LOI on from a private vendor about two weeks ago. Vista Hermosa is a near-surface copper oxide deposit in Chile. The property currently has a non-compliant resource estimate of 12Mt at 1% copper, with only 5% of the property having been drilled. The company’s initial target for the copper oxide zone, based on known strike dimensions, widths and postulated depths are estimated to be from 90 to 100Mt at a grade range from 0.9 to 1 % Cu. In addition to the copper oxide zone, historic drilling tested sulphides at depth which could provide additional upside to the resource.
The project is very interesting as there are very few new copper oxide projects, which are very attractive as they are heap leachable deposites, and might be brought into production quite cheaply. In addition, Vista Hermosa is easily accessible and has great access to infrastructure as both water and electricity and the project is only 27km from the Port of La Serena.
QRS has to pay the vendor about $2M in cash over the next two and a half years, whereafter the company has to decide to exercise its option to acquire 100% of the project for a fixed amount of $32M.
The company is planning a 60,000m drill program over the next 2 years, to define a resource estimate based on which they’ll decide whether or not to exercise the final acquisition option on the project.
Las Leddas Gold Property
Additionally, QRS Capital has optioned a gold property in the prolific Maricunga gold belt. This belt hosts several multi-million ounce low grade bulk tonnage deposits including Barrick/Kinross’ Cerro Casale mine with over 22Moz of gold reserve which is only 8km away from Las Leddas. This project is obviously in the very early exploration stage, but does have over 3,000m of historic drilling with grades and geology similar to neighboring deposits. The company plans to conduct a 6,000m drill program later this year to define more ore zones.
Management Team
Leading the operation on the ground is President Diego Benalcazar who is a mining geologist and Harvard MBA with over 25 years of Latin American mining experience, including being the President of the Ecuadorian Chamber of Mines.
John Seaman, the current CFO of Premier Gold and Tembo Gold, and former CFO of successful take-over stories Pediment Gold Corp and Wolfden Resources, is the company’s Chairman and CEO.
In addition, the board is strengthened by Robert Sedgemore, President and CEO of CuOro Resources, who also serves as a director on Tembo Gold.
With the same group behind QRS as is behind CuOro Resources and Tembo Gold, we hope they will put the Midas touch on this story as well to match the success at Tembo.
Conclusion
After a long search through 2011 reviewing over 147 projects, we think QRS has found a great property with Vista Hermosa and we look forward to a large exploration program this year. We think that Vista Hermosa copper oxide project shows great promise and we look to see if this will be another great success story for the group.
