ASIA

Red metal moves Matsa

t might have entered Thailand with a dream of imitating one of the region's best miners, but Matsa Resources Ltd is forging its own com- pelling story.
Executive director Paul Poli told Paydirt that Matsa ventured to Thailand in 2009 with a goal to replicate Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd's successful Chatree gold project.
"Our view was that Chatree was a fantastic gold mine, it was a world class operation and there was an abundant amount of gold there as well as a very low operating cost environ- ment," Poli said.
"With a view of emulating their success, we did a small deal with a local geologist to acquire a gold-in-soil anomaly and our view then was if we had a presence in Thailand we should make it worth our while and increase our footprint. We got our own team together and we started prospecting."
With much of Central Thailand's west snapped up by Kingsgate, Matsa looked south, where it pegged roughly 800sq km for magnetite anomalies, and then east, where the company secured 700sq km for copper.
"We went out there and because no one else was sniffing around we got the pick of the land," Poli said.
"We got what we believed to be extraordi- narily high quality copper prospective ground." Poli said Matsa was "completely enam- oured" with its land in the east, which boasted surface rocks exhibiting native, primary cop-
per.
"It was the gold that brought us to Thailand, but when we were prospecting we were doing so for a mine," the managing director said.

"As it so happens, there are still issues with getting gold licences in Thailand. I think there is still government resistance. There was a moratorium for gold licences for a fair while and although that has now been lifted they haven't really sorted out their gold policy. When we came across copper we were de- lighted, because it gave us diver-
sity - diversity of products and diversity of geopolitical risks. We liked the idea of being in Aus- tralia and Thailand. So when we saw that we had these potential copper plays we went to work hard on it."
Favourable permitting con- ditions allowed Matsa to start work immediately on the ground, which is located on a region- ally extensive stream sediment anomaly identified by the Thai Department of Mineral Resourc- es survey in 2006.
The project area is 300km north of Bangkok and consists of
49 special prospect licence ap- plications.
Matsa completed 1,114 soil and stream sediment samples
per stream sediment anomalies, the largest being Siam 1 at 25sq km.
Preliminary investigations at Siam 1 led to assays exceeding 1% copper in rocks com- prising epidote prehnite altered andesite in an area of extensive soil cover and later Matsa discovered surface boulders containing na- tive copper with up to 3.9% copper.
At Siam 2, the project's second best pros- pect, Matsa identified float containing visible secondary copper minerals with up to 1.2% copper within a stream sediment copper anomaly approximately 16sq km.
On April 8 Matsa realised an almost six year dream when it was granted 37 special prospecting licences covering an area of
570sq km at Siam, which allowed it to start

The Siam copper project site

more extensive exploration on the project,
specifically drilling.
Further mapping of the Siam 1 prospect defined three specific areas of future works: Siam 1 East, Siam 1 West and Siam 1 North, each approximately 1sq km in size.
Poli said Siam 1 West, which contained vis- ible native copper and malachite mineralisa- tion, and Siam 1 East, had the hallmarks of underlying copper sulphide mineralisation and would likely be the subject of Matsa's maiden drilling campaign.
"That's as good a walk up target as you'll ever get," he said.
"We need to do some IP to determine the size of a potential structure and then pepper it with Diamond holes. We could potentially be Diamond drilling it within 3-4
weeks."
Native copper at surface aside, Poli said Siam had all the traits of a cracking project.
"The site is serviced by sealed roads and we've got grid power within 1km of the potential areas we are interested in," he said.
"We are probably only 50km to the east of Chatree and the land is relatively low value farm- ing country. There is a relatively high unemployment rate … so the local community would re- ally welcome an operation of our type. We would create substan- tial jobs in an area that's got lim- ited employment opportunities for locals."

- Rhys Dickinson

and identified four coherent cop-

Matsa executive chairman Paul Poli, right, with the Siam exploration team

AUSTRALIA'S PAYDIRT JUNE 2015 PAGE 85