Chairman of the Board Jim Decker on left and Dr. Allen M. Alper Editor-in-Chief Metals News
Antioquia Gold Inc. has only been around for two and a half years, but the potential they have is very exciting.
We had the opportunity to interview Jim Decker and learn about his high potential new gold company. Mr. Decker has a B.Sc. (Mining Engineering) from Queen's University and is a registered mining engineer (P. Eng.) with >40 years in the mining business. We’re very impressed with Jim, his team and Antioquia Gold Inc. Often it can take years for a single company to produce real excitement or results, but Antioquia Gold Inc. has managed to accomplish that exciting level of progress in just two and a half years, creating quite a stir among many potential investors.
James West, MidasLetter.com, Thursday, October 8, 2009, wrote a very favorable article entitled “Antioquia Gold Shaping Up to be a Winner,” See http://metalsnews.com/featured.aspx?ArticleID=65561 . James West visited the Antioquia Gold properties and concluded “Antioquia Gold is doing everything right, in my opinion. The property has demonstrated through sampling and artisanal mining the potential for a major discovery on the order of many millions of ounces gold.
Our plan is to start accumulating shares in the open market throughout the drill program, and continue accumulating to $1 a share with continuing drill success. Because of the other major projects enjoying success right now in Colombia, the slightest hint of a major discovery hole will likely send these shares northward on a steep trajectory and in no time at all. That’s what I like about this project. Even if this program doesn’t hit a major discovery hole, there are so many additional targets that it has a lot of possibility.”
In an article by Anthony Vaccaro entitled “Antioquia Gold has high hopes for Cisneros and Colombia” which was published in www.northernminer.com , October 26-November 1, 2009 Vol. 95, NO. 36 states “And the timing of the company’s move into the country couldn’t have been better; the market is just now catching up to the Colombia story — as attested to by the spectacular market run of Ventana Gold (ven-t, vengf-o), which holds the La Bodega gold project in the country.
Equal Partners
Founding a company isn’t always as easy as going to nine people you know with a great idea, but for Antioquia, that’s exactly what happened.
Chairman of the Board Jim Decker said, “I’m one of ten equal partners that founded the company two and a half years ago in May of 2007. We took our private company and amalgamated it with an existing public company called High American Gold that had been de-listed. We cleaned up the debts . . . and renamed the company Antioquia Gold Inc, and we went public on August 5, 2008. Our mandate is to explore for gold in Colombia.”
What a mandate, that is, too, given the property they currently have on their hands. Antioquia has one flagship property – dubbed the Cisneros Property. It’s about eighty kilometers northeast of Medellin and serviced via the main coastal highway. That highway essentially bisects the property, but it was this area the partners handpicked as a result of the history here and the excellent level of access to professionals, service providers, and international flights.
The property is a mining paradise. Their main property is composed of three pieces- Guayabito, La Manuela), and Santa Domingo (a joint venture from Grupo de Bullet, a private company. Antioquia is currently drilling on both the Guayabito and La Manuela properties, and while they’ve focused much of their original exploration on that area, they’ve also done a bit of mapping and sampling on the Santa Domingo property. Recently, their work uncovered an artisan mine about a kilometer from the Guayabito property.
Decker said, “We have more than 20 artisanal mines on our property. These are some of the locations, some very high grade results that we’ve taken on chip and channel samples. The highest being 86 grams of gold per ton, 200 grams of silver, and more than 10 percent copper.”
The geology throughout the area is very interesting; too, Decker went on to explain. “We have four major blocks that appear to be bounded by east/west fault structures. We have a series of east/west trending mineralized structures that are carrying gold, and also a series of north/south trending structures. We found in several places, where these structures intersect bonanza grade gold - 40, 50 grams per ton. The best sample result we’ve had prior to our drilling program was 32 grams per ton over 2.5 meters.”
With over forty of these mineralized structures on their property (they’re currently drilling six of those), the possibilities are exciting.
“We did an awful lot of front-end geology work prior to doing our drilling,” said Decker. “What we have is the north boundary of the Guayabito property at 1,800 meters above sea level. Guayabito, itself, is about 1,500 meters. La Manuela is down around more like 1,350 . . . and our property goes down as low as about 1,250. Throughout, we’ve found interesting gold results. I’m saying like five to ten grams per ton up high here and down quite low as well.”
What’s more is that they have a good area to work with. Throughout, the terrain is very favorable. Decker explained that slopes are generally about twenty-six degrees, so it’s fairly easy to get a rig in using manual labor, and their confidence results from the fact that they can visually see where they should be going.
Antioquia is ready, too.
Decker said, “We have a done a lot of background work on the environmental side. We’ve done baseline work on water and air quality. We have all our permits in place for the current ongoing drilling program . . . It’s a few thousand meter program, and we’ve completed 2,200 meters so far. We expect to be posting drill results in about a month’s time. We’re very committed to doing a good job with the environment. Quite frankly, it’s very easy to do. Doing it right from day one is what we’ve been doing.”
The real goal here is to meet and or exceed standards in Colombia and North America, and thanks to a great team as well as good community relations, they’re certainly succeeding on that front.
“The town of Cisneros is on the east edge of our property. It’s about somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 people. This is where our employees live. We’ve got excellent community relations with them, and we’re very committed to Colombia. All of our employees, about ten full-time Colombians, are on our payroll,” said Decker.
Relationships like those are essential in the South American mining community, and Antioquia recognizes the importance of that.
Luck, though, has played a big role in this company too. The discovery that a power company had dug a three meter trench right through the middle of their property between moves on their drill sites in recent months offered them a prime sampling opportunity. They’re still waiting on the results, but a trench like this would probably have cost the company several million dollars and about two years to dig, but it was done for them by accident. The sample work continues with that trench.
Antioquia is even in a good cash position.
Decker said, “We have recently in the last four months raised a little over $4 million. Going ahead for the next twelve months, we forecast about $4.7 million and that’s made up of the $2 million we have in cash right now and the other $2.7 million we expect to come in from exercise of warrants.”
With the recent acquisition of IGTER, an engineering company with many mining properties as well, they’re as well-established as any other company on the map. Still in pursuit of other opportunities in the area, they’ve come a long way in a very short period of time.
For more information:
Antioquia Gold Inc.
Suite 300, 840 - 6th Avenue SW
Calgary, AB
Canada T2P 3E5
Telephone: 403-260-5383
Fax: 403-260-5384
Website: www.antioquiagoldinc.com
Investor Relations Address and Telephone
Jim Decker
Suite 300, 840 - 6th Avenue SW
Calgary, AB
Canada T2P 3E5
Telephone: 403-701-6313
Email: investor@antioquiagoldinc.com