Pampa Metals

Overview

Demand for copper – one of the most critical industrial metals – continues to be driven by the ongoing industrialisation and advancement of developing economies, together with global decarbonization trends; whilst the supply side response and development of new copper projects struggles to keep up with projected demand. Consequently, and further exacerbated by the declining production profiles of many major mines, the supply side shortfall is expected to continue to widen significantly in the coming years, positively impacting copper prices.

Pampa Metals (CSE:PM – “Pampa”) is uniquely positioned to benefit from this favorable backdrop through its seven exploration projects, which collectively form a large, prospective, and strategic landholding of approximately 47,400 hectares along the prolific north Chilean Domeyko and Paleocene Mineral Belts. These belts are host to, and highly prospective for, giant porphyry copper deposits. Pampa retains 100 percent ownership of all seven projects, with two of these projects under option and being farmed out to Austral Gold (AGD:ASX / AGLD:TSX-V).

With no deferred asset payments owing, or expensive expenditure commitments, new equity raised by Pampa can be directed towards aggressive exploration of Pampa’s wholly owned portfolio.

Chile has been the top copper producer globally since the early 1980s, and accounts for roughly 27 percent of global copper supply (2021), more than double the second-ranked nation. The Domeyko Mineral Belt is the world’s single most prolific copper belt, and is host to three of the worlds’ top five copper mining districts, whilst the Paleocene Belt also hosts globally significant deposits and operations. Owing to the challenges in securing meaningful tenure along these belts, both belts remain underexplored.

The Domeyko Mineral Belt is characterized by a complex system of faults that run parallel to the Andean mountains and Chilean coastline. These faults have acted as key geologic controls on the emplacement of porphyry copper deposits, including those within three of the world’s five largest copper mining districts at Collahuasi, Chuquicamata, and La Escondida. The La Escondida-Zaldivar copper mining complex is the world’s single largest copper mining district. Other significant copper mining districts along the belt occur at Centinela, El Salvador, and elsewhere.Pampa controls one of the few significant, junior-owned land packages along the Domeyko Belt, providing its shareholders with unique exposure. The company’s flagship Block 4 copper project lies along the Domeyko Belt and hosts several untested, drill-ready targets, defined by geology, geophysics, geochemistry and age-dating carried out by Pampa over the last 18 months.

Pampa looks forward to commencing a maiden drill program at Block 4 prior to the end of Q1 2023.

Company Highlights

• Pampa Metals is a junior copper exploration company seeking to identify giant porphyry copper deposits along the Domeyko and Paleocene Mineral Belts in northern Chile.

• The company controls a unique, wholly owned land package across seven projects, covering a combined area of approximately 47,400 hectares along the Domeyko and Paleocene belts. As Pampa enjoys 100 percent ownership of all its properties, there are no deferred asset payments or project expenditure commitments.

• The company’s priority Block 4 copper project hosts several drill-ready targets, generated by extensive surface exploration campaigns carried out by Pampa, including geological mapping, trenching, geophysics, geochemistry and geologic age-dating.

• Pampa has farmed out two projects to Austral Gold and is actively seeking to farm-out three other projects to allow it to focus on its priority projects, including Block 4.

• Pampa has an experienced management team with a long history of successful discoveries and long-standing working knowledge of Chilean porphyry copper deposits, which underpins Pampa’s focus on its maiden Block 4 drill program, and its efforts to advance, identify and acquire other compelling opportunities to discover giant copper porphyry deposits in Chile.

Key Projects

Block 4 Copper Project

Pampa Metals’ 100-percent-owned Block 4 project, located along the Domeyko Mineral Belt, hosts several untested porphyry copper targets, including the principal Buenavista Target. The project covers over 6,600 hectares and is located along trend some 110 kilometers south of the major Escondida-Zaldivar copper mining complex. The Buenavista Target hosts dacite porphyry, evidence for phreatomagmatic breccia, quartz-veinlet stockwork, quartz-sulphide breccia, and trenches containing copper-moly-gold-silver anomalies, with complementary geophysical anomalies. Additional targets are largely defined by geophysical anomalies through post-mineral cover, and may suggest a cluster of porphyry systems on the Block 4 property.

Project Highlights:

• Untested Porphyry Copper Targets: Block 4 has received minor historic exploration, including reconnaissance drill-testing, but the principal Buenavista Target identified by Pampa Metals has never been drill-tested, nor have the additional geophysical targets identified by Pampa.
• Completed Exploration Campaigns Demonstrate Potential: Pampa Metals has completed several surface exploration campaigns to identify priority targets to date:
  • Geological mapping and ground magnetics surveying (Q4 2021)
    • Resulted in identification and discovery of Buenavista Target
  • Trenching and rock sampling (Q1 2022)
    • Assays up to 0.26 % copper, including 24 meters at 0.14 % copper
    • Assays up to 0.64 g/t gold, including 24 meters at 0.25 g/t gold
  • IP geophysical surveying (Q2/Q3 2022)
  • Geochemical soil sampling (Q3/Q4 2022)
• Proposed Diamond Drill Program: A 2,100-meter discovery drill campaign is slated to begin in Q1 2023. The focus will be on Buenavista and likely one, covered, geophysical target. Assays are expected by Q2-Q3 2023.

Cerro Buenos Aires Copper Project

Pampa Metals’ 100-percent-owned, 7,000-hectare Cerro Buenos Aires project is located along the Paleocene Copper-Gold mineral belt in Northern Chile, along trend from the major precious metals district at El Peñon, as well as significant copper deposits such as Spence and Sierra Gorda. The project displays hydrothermal alteration typical of high-sulphidation epithermal and porphyry deposits over about 12 kilometers north-south. Limited historic drilling has cut both minor precious metals, and porphyry-related intercepts. Pampa’s work has highlighted a largely covered porphyry copper target in the north, Cerro Chiquitin, based on limited geological outcrops, geophysics, geochemistry, and wide-spaced reconnaissance reverse-circulation drilling. The core target at Cerro Chiquitin remains to be tested with diamond drilling. Other geochemical and geophysical anomalies on the large property, typified by widespread post-mineral cover, remain to be followed up to define drill targets.

Project Highlights:

• Untested Porphyry Copper Targets: The core of the Cerro Chiquitin target is obscured by post-mineral cover, and remains to be followed up by diamond drilling. Other potential post-mineral covered targets on the property require further surface follow-up, largely focused on geophysics and geochemistry, prior to possible drill-testing.
• Proposed Diamond Drill Program: The work carried out by Pampa Metals in the Cerro Chiquitin area has defined a drill target where approximately 1,500 meters to 2,000 meters of diamond drilling are proposed.
• Completed Exploration Campaigns Demonstrate Potential: Historic exploration campaigns at Cerro Buenos Aires have included geological mapping, geophysical surveys (heli-borne magnetics, heli-borne EM, limited CSAMT), geochemical surveys over portions of the property (soil sampling, limited rock sampling), and limited historic, reconnaissance-style reverse-circulation drilling. Pampa has access to these databases.
• Additionally, Pampa has completed:
  • Detailed geological mapping – indicating the presence of a likely porphyry system in the Cerro Chiquitin area, including porphyry-style veining and a tourmaline breccia
  • IP geophysical surveying in the Cerro Chiquitin area – gradient array and pole-dipole
  • Wide-spaced reconnaissance reverse-circulation drilling in covered areas to the north and south of Cerro Chiquitin – enabling zonation models to define the current target requiring drill follow-up

Other Projects

Arrieros

• The 900-hectare Arrieros project is entirely obscured by post-mineral cover, comprises an undrilled IP chargeability anomaly (1 kilometer in diameter), and lies along the Domeyko copper belt, along trend from, and midway between, the giant Chuquicamata and Centinela copper mining districts. Pampa has completed geological mapping of peripheral outcrops, IP geophysics, and drone-flown magnetics surveys on the property (Q1 2021).

Redondo-Veronica

• The 6,600-hectare Redondo-Veronica project lies along trend from, and 45 km north-northeast of, the giant La Escondida-Zaldivar copper mining district, along the Domeyko copper belt.
• The project comprises five separate zones of hydrothermal alteration indicative of porphyry copper type systems. Historic drill-testing was focused on one of these targets, with unknown results. Pampa has completed detailed geological mapping and drone-flown magnetics and IP geophysical surveys (Q1 / Q2 2021), and completed a reconnaissance-style reverse-circulation drill program (Q2/Q3 2021). Results from this body of work have defined the Redondo Southwest target as requiring deeper drilling follow-up. Other targets require further surface work to help define further drill targets.

Block 3 Copper Project

• The Block 3 project covers 10,100 hectares and lies along trend from, and 60 km south-southwest of, the giant La Escondida-Zaldivar copper mining district. Two historically drill-tested porphyry copper projects are immediately adjacent to Block 3, on third-party ground. Limited, shallow, historic drilling on the Block 3 property is very wide-spaced.
• Pampa has completed detailed geological mapping of limited outcrops within the largely post-mineral covered property, as well as a drone-flown magnetics survey. This work has indicated multiple magnetic features of potential interest for porphyry copper systems. Further follow-up, focused on IP geophysics, is required in order to define potential drill targets.

Projects Subject to Third-Party Expenditures and Earn-In

Pampa Metals has farmed out two of its projects to Austral Gold Ltd. (Austral), an ASX and TSX dual listed junior gold-silver miner, with operating mines in northern Chile. Austral has the option to earn up to an 80-percent interest in each project by completing certain expenditure and milestone commitments, including a full, bankable feasibility study for the final earn-in.

Project Highlights:

• Morros Blancos: The Morros Blancos project is located along the Paleocene Mineral Belt, immediately east of Austral's operating Amancaya gold-silver mine, and along trend from the giant El Peñon gold-silver mineral district. Morros Blancos displays hydrothermal alteration focused in three separate target areas along a 15-kilometer corridor oriented north-northeast, with characteristics of high-sulphidation epithermal gold-silver deposits. Geological features of particular interest include Maar-diatreme complexes, other widespread phreatomagmatic events, widespread advanced argillic alteration, and surface geochemical pathfinder anomalies. Very limited historic drilling has not tested the targets defined to date, and limited drill-testing by Austral in 2022 failed to penetrate to sufficient depths to test one target due to drilling problems. Further drill-testing is planned.

• Cerro Blanco: The Cerro Blanco project is also located along the Paleocene Mineral Belt and is located 22 kilometers southwest of the El Penon gold-silver mine. The project displays intense advanced argillic hydrothermal alteration in volcanic rocks in a series of small outcrops surrounded by extensive post-mineral cover. A pair of prominent magnetic anomalies lie immediately north of the outcrops, beneath cover, and may represent porphyry copper targets. Austral has been exploring covered targets further north within the property for potentially covered high-sulphidation precious metals systems.

Management Team

Joseph van den Elsen – President, CEO and Corporate Secretary

Joseph van den Elsen is a dual Australian/Colombian citizen who currently serves as the chairman of Ronin Resources Ltd (RON:ASX) and has held a number of executive and non-executive positions with listed and unlisted mineral exploration and development companies including Ookami Ltd (OOK.ASX), MHM Metals (VYS.ASX), Ascot Resources (AZQ:ASX), OAR Resources Ltd (OAR.ASX), Arcadia Minerals Ltd (AM7.ASX), Arkham Metals and Hampshire Mining. Previous experience also includes serving as an associate director with UBS and holding a comparable position with Goldman Sachs JBWere. He graduated from LaTrobe University with a bachelor of arts and a bachelor of laws and later graduated from the University of Melbourne with a graduate diploma in environment, energy and resources law, and from Curtin University with a graduate diploma in mineral exploration geoscience. Van den Elsen is currently pursuing a master of science (mineral economics) through Curtin University.

Timothy Beale - VP Exploration

Timothy Beale is a geologist with 30 years of technical, operational and commercial experience in mineral exploration, including senior management roles, gained from work in a wide range of commodities, but focused on copper and gold-silver, and multiple jurisdictions and cultures working with BP Minerals, Rio Tinto, Anglo American, and Hochschild Mining in Europe, South America, and North America.

For the last 10 years, Beale has worked in the junior exploration world, with roles including president and CEO, with a focus on South America and Chile in particular. Beale is fluent in Spanish and has lived in three central Andean countries over a period of 20 years prior to moving to Canada, where he currently resides. He has been involved in the early-stage discoveries at Altar (Argentina), San Jose (Argentina), and led the Peruvian team at Anglo American in the successful US$400-million bid for the Michiquillay porphyry copper deposit privatized by the Peruvian government.

Beale was also involved in raising more than $25 million on equity markets, was integral in completing the merger of two junior companies, and was a founder and key driver of the RTO that formed Pampa Metals. Beale has held directorships of public junior companies, and remains a director of one public junior company.

Beale has a bachelor of science from the University of London, and a master of science from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College in London.

Adrian Manger - Chairman and Director

Corporate finance executive with 35 years of minerals industry experience, comprising 20 years in executive and leadership roles with BHP, including the $US1-billion development of the Spence copper mine in Chile. Manger has substantial business experience in South America.

He is co-founder and director of various business enterprises in Australia, Chile and Peru, with private and public financings exceeding $30 million. Manger led or participated in corporate finance transactions involving entity sales to public companies; IPO of SensOre, RTO of Pampa Metals; merger to form CopperEx; financings from HNW’s Investment Bank & Private Equity; and multiple commercial transactions.

He holds public directorship with SensOre Ltd (ASX: S3N), leading the application of AI/ML to minerals exploration. He is a founding board member of the Australia Colombia Business Council; former board member of Fundacion Buen Punto, a Colombian not-for-profit community sports foundation aimed at utilizing iconic sports to foster sports diplomacy and peace for underprivileged youth and children; and former committee member of the Bogota Bulldogs Australian football club.

Julian Bavin - Director

Julian Bavin has 30 years of technical, operational and commercial experience in mineral exploration gained from work in a wide range of commodities, jurisdictions and cultures, most of which was spent with the Rio Tinto Group in South America, Australia, Indonesia and Europe. From 2000 to 2001, he was the business development executive for the Industrial Minerals Group in Rio Tinto, progressing opportunities in Europe and South America. From 2001 to 2009, he was the exploration director for the Rio Tinto Group in South America and responsible for the teams which identified the potential in a range of projects now in various stages of feasibility, including the Rio Colorado potash and Alter copper/gold projects in Argentina, the Mina Justa, Constancia and La Granja copper projects in Peru, and the Amargosa bauxite project in Brazil. After South America, he moved to London as Rio Tinto’s exploration director responsible for Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Former Soviet Union, with a brief that included the Jadar lithium-borates discovery in Serbia (now in feasibility).

Bavin has a bachelor of science from the University of Leicester, a master of science from Imperial College in London, and is a graduate of the senior executive programme at the London Business School.

Bill Tsang – Chief Financial Officer

Bill Tsang brings more than 15 years of accounting experience in the mineral exploration and mining industry focusing on financial reporting, regulatory compliance, internal controls, and corporate finance activities. Tsang has held numerous CFO positions with publicly traded entities. He has worked in public practice providing professional services and advice to publicly traded companies on the NYSE, TSX-V and OTC markets, on various public reporting services, such as audit requirements, qualifying transactions for reverse takeover, mergers and acquisitions, and financing transactions. Tsang holds a bachelor of commerce from the University of British Columbia and is a chartered professional accountant and chartered accountant.