Canabrava Polymetallic Project

The Canabrava VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) Project is located over the Goiás-Tocantins State boundary in central Brazil and comprises 40,628 hectares of exploration claims and licenses, over strike extensions of the Palmeirópolis Deposits, which are a series of zinc, lead, copper and silver sulphide ore bodies discovered by the CPRM (Brazilian Geological Survey) in the 1970’s.

Exploration Work

In early 2009, airborne geophysics defined twenty-three new targets on the project. 2,870.8 line kilometres of VTEM (helicopter-borne time domain electromagnetic) geophysics were flown over the belt, covering a 645.6 square kilometre area at a 250 metre line spacing. Of the twenty-three new targets, ten are considered priority one, five as priority two and eight as third priority. Stream sediment geochemistry was also completed over the whole belt. Exploration work completed during 2010 has comprised follow-up soil geochemistry and terrestrial geophysics on these target areas. For 2011 Votorantim is undertaking a 1,500-metre diamond drill program, comprising initially 8 holes, testing four priority target areas, where airborne geophysics and more detailed surface work, have defined electromagnetic conductors with coincident copper and zinc anomalies values from soil sampling.

Geology and Mineralization

The region lies within the Brasiliano Fold belt, a Proterozoic-age mobile belt that extends up through central Brazil. The Palmeirópolis deposits are hosted by a Mid-Proterozoic greenstone belt of the same name, comprising a meta-volcano-sedimentary sequence of bimodal volcanics (basalt-rhyolite), overlain by cherts, banded iron formations and pelitic and volcanoclastic sediments. Metamorphic grade is amphibolites facies and the sequence is also intruded by granites. Massive sulphide mineralization is stratabound, hosted by the basal volcanics and has been interpreted as volcanic massive sulphide type (VMS) due to the well-developed alteration zones underneath the ore bodies. The ore bodies are highly deformed.

CPRM Palmeirópolis Deposit

Details of the Palmeirópolis deposit are in the public domain, published in a CPRM report from the year 2000 "Zinco, Chumbo e Cobre de Palmeirópolis Estado de Tocantins". The report shows that the CPRM drilled some ~32,000m of diamond core at Palmeirópolis in the 1970's, of which ~26,000 was used to define four ore bodies (C1 to C4) with a total resource of 5.5Mt at an average grade of 5.28% Zn+Pb, 0.83% Cu and 23.95 g/t Ag. These resources are historical and not National Instrument 43-101 compliant, however they are considered material to the prospectivity of the adjacent Lara properties.

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