The Lagoa Salgada Property covers a polymetallic (copper‑lead‑zinc‑gold‑silver) VMS deposit discovered by the Portuguese Geological Survey in 1992.  The deposit is hosted within a buried extension of the Iberian Pyrite Belt, a belt well known for its significant past and present base metal production from mines such as Rio Tinto in Spain, and Neves Corvo in Portugal.

The Property

The initial contract for the Lagoa Salgada Concession was signed by Redcorp Empreendimentos Mineiros Unipessoal Lda. (“REM”) on November 3, 2004. REM is a wholly owned Portuguese subsidiary company of Redcorp Ventures Ltd. (“Redcorp”.) On October 1, 2008, REM relinquished the old concession, and entered into a new concession agreement over the area. This new exploration concession grants REM another two year exclusive period to explore for base and precious metals plus tin, iron, manganese, barium and pyrite over the area. After the initial two year period, the concession could be converted to an exploitation concession, or REM could elect to extend the concession by one year, two times, with a 50% reduction in area each time The new concession covers an area of approximately 208 square kilometers, up from the 103 square kilometer area held at the end of the previous contract. Redcorp maintains the concession through its work programs and by making cash payments.

Exploration History

Exploration in the Lagoa Salgada area has a very recent history in contrast to areas of the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) where the Paleozoic volcanics (and associated massive sulphide mineralization) outcrop; some deposits in the Pyrite Belt have been exploited since Phoenician times. At Lagoa Salgada, exploration began in early 1990s with geophysical surveys and diamond drilling and in 1992 the Instituto Geologico e Mineiro (IGM) – the Portuguese government geological survey- discovered significant massive sulphide deposit and associated stockwork alteration zone. The deposit remains only partially delineated.

During 1994 to 1999, the property was explored by a consortium of EDM (the Portuguese state mining company) and Rio Tinto (RTZ) who performed additional geophysical surveys and diamond drilling.   In 2000, the consortium opted to relinquish their property interest.  The property remained open ground until the acquisition of the concession by REM.  

Both the challenge and the opportunity at Lagoa Salgada derive from the fact that the target rocks are buried under at least 150m of cover. REM began the project with a review of the historical data including the geophysical results and the results from 57 of the historical drill holes in the overall Lagoa Salgada area. Since its acquisition of the property, REM has reprocessed historical geophysical data, drilled 10,977m in 22 holes, and completed an NI 43-101 compliant resource calculation on the Lagoa Salgada deposit. The Lagoa Salgada deposit is presently estimated to contain 2,017,000 tonnes in the inferred category grading 0.35% copper, 4.83% lead, 5.13% zinc, 1.29 g/t gold and 85.35 g/t silver, based on an NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate completed on behalf of Redcorp by  Wardrop Engineering Inc.,reported  on August 21, 2007.  The full Wardrop report is available on SEDAR.  The known deposit has been disrupted by post-ore faulting and part of the ongoing REM exploration effort is directed towards exploring for off-set continuations of the mineralization. Recent drilling in 2007 and 2008 has intersected encouraging footwall style quartz-sericite pyrite alteration in step-outs across an inferred fault to the northeast of the deposit. Potential extensions of the Lagoa Salgada deposit remain a priority target for further exploration.

In addition to expanding the known Lagoa Salgada deposit, REM has actively been exploring for additional massive sulphide deposits on the property.  In 2007, a new massive pyrite occurrence was discovered on the concession in the Rio de Moinhos area, about 11km southeast of the Lagoa Salgada deposit. All three follow-up holes drilled in 2008 successfully intercepted the target horizon. The best result from the four holes drilled thus far on the target was obtained from RM08008, which returned 2.21m grading 0.20% lead and 0.27% zinc from an intercept about 110m down-dip from the discovery intercept in RM08004.  This confirmation that base metal mineralization is associated with the massive sulphide horizon is encouraging, and pursuit of the target is warranted.