SFEG news
Santa Fe Gold Quadruples The Size Of Its Malone Mines Area Holdings GlobeNewswire "Press Releases"
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. , Nov. 10, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Santa Fe Gold Corporation (OTC:SFEG), a U.S. -based mining and exploration enterprise with emphasis on Gold, Silver, Copper and industrial metals and owner of multiple claims, includingthe Malone Minesand some 20 associated mine sites and in addition,the Playas Lake Bed area of Hidalgo County , New Mexico,is pleased to announceadditional acquisitions surrounding the Malone Mines, almost quadrupling its holdings in thatarea, as it prepares forrenewal of production and processing operations, expectedto begin in the near future.
Just over aweekago, November 1 ,Santa Fe Gold commented on the importanceof industrial metals, including Gold, Silver, Copperand Titaniumand their increasing relevance to the dynamicnew world of High Technology,Aerospace and the Internet of Things.
Thatsame day, the world's largest miner, BHP, announced: "Why Electric Cars Excite the Worlds Biggest Mining Company ."
It turned bullish on the red metal, statingit liked copper, because of its increasingly predominantuse in allelectric vehicles.
Since October 24 , copper prices have soareda spectacular 24% and prospects never looked betterfor thecoming yearsas 'The Internet of Things', 'Electric cars'and 'New Technologies'look set to transformthe copper market into a whole new superhighdemand scenario.
On November 1 , BHP made thishistoric pronouncement: EVs at the moment have about 80 kilograms of copper in them. As they become more efficient, you will see a greater amount of copper in those vehicles, so theres always upside for copper.
According to BHP, production of Electric Vehicles is expected to reach 40 million units by 2040, asEVs begin to experience exponentialgrowthovercoming decades. Given the magnitude of suchpowerfulnumbers,its not hard to see why copper suddenly took off on a massive upswing, signaling a brightnew erafor copper prices, further buoyed by the U.S. election.
Since Arizona and New Mexico are themajor epicenters of copper production in the US, it is no surprise that, following Santa Fe Gold's discovery of a potentially huge copper deposit near Lordsburg two years ago, in a rare move, bothBHP and Rio Tinto immediately acquired some 20 square miles of territory surrounding Santa Fe's discovery. These areas are notably close to Santa Fe's recent newacquisitions and its strong emphasis on this very richareais reminiscent of afamiliarmining adage:
You find copperin provencopper countryand gold inepic gold country, especially with notablyhigh grade producing seams:
TheKnight's Peak areaand surrounding terrainof the Burro Mountains istrue 'high grade goldterritory', withsome 80% of all the gold discovered to date in New Mexico having come from this area. Thatis the reason Santa Fe has already put so much emphasison the Malone Minesand itssurrounding areaswith renewed promise ofsuch significant upside potential.
The area has yielded abundantgold and as the recently published Reuters MiningArticle highlighted below implies, isreason enough to prospect formore goldthere. It is also said that the profiles of many gold and copper mines are a lot like icebergs:
What's near the surfaceoften belies what's beneath. That could also apply to the Malone Mines area, where some 20 mines over a great many number of years, reportedly yielded some truly amazinggold grades that by any measure were quite exceptionalatupwards of16 oz per ton. While these grades were unusually high, theyenabled sensationalrevenues per ton, and alsopoint to a concentration of numerousseams culminating in various faults that suggestadditional goldpotential.
For this reason, Santa Fe Gold istoday announcinga near quadrupling of its position surrounding the Malone Mines complex.
Beyond conventionalsurface mining, what lies beneathmay not only go a long waydown, butcould open up a whole new mining opportunity and theprospectof some great new discoveries for Santa Fe Gold . Many of the world's largest discoveries weremade this way,where quite ofteninitial estimates were justan indicationof what came to be massive new discoveries.
Such a discoveryoccurred decades ago with the world's largest gold and copper mine:The huge Grasberg Mine in Indonesia , initially a million ounce gold discovery:Over decades, not only cametoproducemillions ofounces of Gold per year, but also millions of tons of copper andcontinues to do so, from a near 'bottomless pit'in a high yielding mountainousregion.
While not quite as high or dramatic,the Knight's Peak and Malone Mines areas in theBurro Mountains arealso high yielding mines, as aremany other mountainous areasworldwide and also come with some 500,000 tons of potentially high grade mine tailings, readyfor reprocessing and should be relatively easy to add to Santa Fe production operations as they resume.
Santa Fe Gold's new strategy to avail of the current asset rich environment and build valueby acquiring the besthigh value quality properties with significantproduction potential, is encapsulated in a recent article published by Reuters'Mining Gold':
It highlightedthe lack of any really major new deposits and discoveries being made that arenecessary to maintain long term production of gold and silver.This is amajorreason prices will likely rise in coming years, in part,dueto record investment demand in 2016, together with central bank purchases of 271 tons of gold to date, along withincreasing shortages of mined gold, as future demand forgold continues to soarworldwide and outputdeclines by anestimated to be 9% overthe next three years.
Top producers are relying more than ever on "small companies" to do the 'heavy lifting'of searching for new deposits and they are increasingly taking 10 to 20 percent equity stakes in the junior miners that succeed in acquiring sought after assets.
Several leadingcompanies in the emerging gold miningsector have done exactly that and the most ambitious have achieved already monumental gains in assets and values and are already being eyed by majors.This is a trend that will likely continue and ultimately leadto mergers andacquisitions of an increasing numbers of successful emerging miners in years ahead.
This is theauthenticationof Santa Fe Gold's new value building acquisition strategy as outlined in its recentannouncements:
Santa Fe Gold's Exploration and Acquisition Teamisintimately familiarin identifying diverse known deposits, 'close to home', because it has the data and relationships toacquire them more easily and hasexclusive, proprietary knowledge of the region as towhere the most prospective targets are known to exist and are available.With the overall strategy to continue to build definitivetangible value and acquire additional highly prospective territories on a planned ongoingbasis:
The company aims torebuildvalue for shareholders, through continuous, contiguous and sequential asset procurements and organic growth:Its anticipatedseriesof planned acquisitions is centered aroundthe additionalmajor benefitof near term production, possibly from several sources, thereindifferentiating itself frommost other emergingminers. The company is already intensely focused on potentially monetizing several extremely coveted assets already under its control, whichare expected to be announced in the near future.
As if to be echoing, if notendorsingSanta Fe Gold's approachoutlined above as well as itspreviously professedstrategy and commitment to rebuilding the company,the Reuters"Mining Article" went on to say:
"Exploring close to home is more cost efficient and improves the odds of discoveries. It only makes sense to be looking in your own back yard first and around existing sites,before exploring elsewhere."
Thisis the Santa Fe model exactly. Itis precisely the strategy that Santa Fe Gold has beenexecuting on,is ongoing and will continue to doso methodically.
To add further credence,the article went on to quote:
"They say the best place to discover a mine is in the shadow of a head frame" of a mine that is already in existence
This personifies the Malone Mines acquisition and the strategy Santa Fe Gold has outlined and is fulfilling, with compelling reasoning and logic for what today isits expansion of Malone, which it sees as having high near term production potential.
As previously reported, the other persuasivereasoningfor expanding the area Santa Fe already has under its control, is the fact that,not too far from Malone Mines and Knight's Peak, the two largest miners in the world, namely BHP and Rio Tinto, on the very same day, both staked a huge amount of territory equaling some 20 square miles, in a highly unusual competitive move. With today's developments and future prospects for copper,their actionsresulted fromreaching the same conclusions as are now highlighted above with BHP's EV announcement. These two companies wanted to secure any potential copper or gold bearing region for the longer term as prices recover, which is the same reasoning behind Santa Fe's acquisition strategy.
About the Malone Mines and its new expanded areas
The newly acquired targeted area for Santa Fe Gold's operations in and around the Knight's Peak and Malone Mines area of the Burro Mountains is 15 miles north of Lordsburg . The history of this composite of mine sites is solid, the accessibility reasonable and operational processes easily implemented. These attributes significantly enhance the valuable raw ores which are inherent.
Seven generations of miners have prospered from exploration, mining, metallurgy and minerology of the region. They traversed the geographic area, solidified multiple claims and established profitable operations. Over time, they did multiple staking over a large part of the Malone Fault area. The two primary mines which they opened up and operated are in close proximity and are situated at the converging point of multiple established veins of gold and silver, much of it still virgin territory for Santa Fe.
The prime location is preeminently desirable, located 4 miles off the main highway, with a smooth access road and without any encumbrances or natural structures presenting obstacles for either equipment or personnel required for mining operations.
As early as 2014, what is now Santa Fe Gold's Exploration and Acquisition Team completed all of their currentsurvey work at the location, verifying the historical information about the geology and established mine shafts. The shafts appear to be unobstructed and sheltered and secured in compliance with MMD regulations and requirements for safety.
With basic excavation and loading equipment, the shafts could be cleared, buttressed and brought into full compliance with all current requirements for mining and made operational at the established depths and beyond.
CEO Tom Laws added: The above communique is designedto explain our strategy in plain language, so that shareholders can get a sense of our ongoing plans for the acquisition, development and mining of a number of properties we currently have in our acquisition pipeline that we expect tobeannouncing over the coming weeks.We are delighted with the progress so far in securing not only the 20 or so Malone Mines sites, but also being able to exponentially expand our area of controlin one of the most prospective gold mining and copper producing regions.All this, in the very rich,mining friendly and politically stable Southwestern U.S. I can also state we are currently doing everything we can to move to monetization as rapidlyas possible.
The Malone Mineshave substantial potential withunmined deposits that canbe mined and processed on an industrial scale.
We are ongoing in evaluatingthe best and most efficientways to achieve this andcontinue withfield verification and inhouse analysis of the large amount of our data that is now in our possession.We have also concluded that even atprices well below todays gold price, the Malone Minesproject should support development of severalvery profitable new gold mines.
We continue to believe the next several months will be an exciting time in the transformation of Santa Feand want to thank you for your patience and support.
The company is also expecting to announce its 2014 - 16 financials in the very near future.
About Santa Fe Gold
Santa Fe Gold is a U.S. -based mining and exploration enterprise and owns the following mining assets: The Knights Peak region of Grant County, New Mexico comprising the Malone Mines, Patanka, Hillcrest Barranca and Principal Mines altogether incorporatingsometwentymine sites andall located at Knights Peaktogether withan extensiveexpandedarea surrounding the Malone Minesin the southern region of BurroMountains, New Mexico . It also owns multipleclaims in the Playas area of Hidalgo County, New Mexico .
Santa Fes Exploration and Development Team continues to analyze a number of attractive, economically viable opportunities that should enable the resumption of mining and production operations soon.
For more information please visitwww.santafegoldcorp.com
Forward Looking Statements
Please refer to previous announcement for all disclosures re:Santa Fe Gold's acquisition of Malone Mines available atwebsite.
Contact Frank MuellerCFO 505-255-4852 fmueller@santafegoldcorp.com
Source: Santa Fe Gold Corporation
