Forte Minerals CEO Highlights Strategy for Prospecting, Acquiring Prolific Assets at Low Cost

Forte Minerals’ (CSE:CUAU) ability to discover and acquire exploration properties at a low cost in Peru has been largely accomplished through two strategies: seeking relinquished properties when the market is down, and employing remote sensing technology for discoveries, according to the company’s president and CEO, Patrick Elliott.

"Through low market times, we thrive on property acquisitions, deals, negotiating," he said. "It's usually around a time when other companies are relinquishing properties. A lot of the majors go through these periods whereby exploration gets the first cut. ... So we remain very flexible to be able to pick up these properties for nothing."

Elliott was commenting on the company’s recent acquisition of two properties in Peru — the Alto Ruri gold prospect and the Cerro Quillo gold-copper-molybdenum prospect — for a one-time cash payment of only US$25,000.

“Predominantly, our model is discovering through remote sensing,” Elliott said. “We've made five or six remote sensing discoveries from space using satellite imagery data, and Peru works really well. It's a phenomenal place to deploy this technique, because there's not a whole lot of vegetation cover in the Andes.”

The same model for prospecting exploration properties has been deployed by Forte since it began operations in Peru, given its remoteness. Remote sensing has allowed the company to scope out assets without the logistical challenges associated with having personnel on the ground, he added.

“The challenge is logistics, remoteness and just finding the time and the team to go in and follow up on the hundreds and hundreds of anomalies that we've depicted and highlighted … Maybe in a year we might get to 10 or 12 new ones, but it takes a while to follow up on them,” Elliott said. "So it's a phenomenal way to acquire properties for (essentially) nothing, and for staking. It's also why we spent 15 years doing this model."

Watch the full interview with Patrick Elliott, president and CEO of Forte Minerals, above.