Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/1058321
58 www.resourceworld.com D E C E M B E R / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9 MINING B ig mining companies are full of good geologists. Time and again, these geologists recognize potential in a project but are unable to do much with it because corporate focus is else- where. The best they can do it convince management to hold on to the project...which is how many good projects end up gathering dust, tucked inside a major company's portfolio, going unnoticed – sometimes the claims expire. That's how John Mirko, President and CEO, and his team at Rokmaster Resources Corp. [RKR-TSXV; RKMSF-OTC] got their hands on the Duncan Lake zinc-lead project in the Kootenay region of southeast British Columbia. After Cominco amalgamated with Teck, the Duncan Lake claims inadvertently expired and a group of enterprising prospectors staked them. Between them, Jack Denny, Robert Denny and Graeme Haines, they acquired 16 claims and later sold them to Rokmaster Resources who added another five claims building up a land package of 3,938 hectares. The Duncan Lake Project has been explored since the turn of the 20th century with the first geological record going back to 1904. Sporadic exploration followed until between 1989 until 1997 when Cominco completed 12 drill holes totalling 8,333.9 metres of core. Following the drill program, Cominco completed an economic "sensitivity analysis" on the project property using a 10-million tonne deposit with a mineable grade of 8.5% zinc, 1.0% lead and 0.2 oz/ton silver, the assumption of an onsite milling facility and tailings impoundment, and applying several throughput, con- centrate production and metal pricing scenarios. The evaluation determined that a 2,000 tonne-per-day operation would be viable having a payback of 5.5 years and mine life of 13.7 years. After the sensitivity analysis was complete the project sat unexplored and the claims lapsed. Rokmaster has assembled an impressive list of directors and management consisting of many of same group who were involved in Cominco's exploration, development work and mine construc- tion in the area. Rokmaster Resources brought on David Moore who was the exploration manager for Cominco and managed the last drill pro- gram on the property as a board member. The second person the company attracted was the chief geologist who wrote the original report on the Duncan Lake Project and is now pinpointing the hole positions for the next drill program. Now Rokmaster Resources owns a 100% of the project and in July 2018 began soil sampling, prospecting, rock sample and mapping a 16 km 2 area located north-northwest of Zone 1 and 2 originally discovered by Cominco. The thinking was the area had little historical prospecting and no mapping and represented a high priority target for an occurrence of near surface lead-zinc mineralization. The bet paid off when assay results from rock samples con- firming a new zinc lead occurrence located about 1.5 km from the Zone 2 occurrence and 7.5 km south of the previously drill Jubilee Point area. The timing for the Duncan Lake discovery is good, too. Zinc had been bucking the trend of most industrial metals recently touching a three–week peak over concerns of supply shortages. The benchmark price on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was US $2,700 per tonne, rising 18% from a 22-month low in August, but still down significantly from the 52-week high of US $3,610.54 per tonne. Rokmaster Resources acquires historic zinc project Unlocking a hidden asset at Duncan Lake by Robert Simpson High-grade zinc showing located 200 metres north-northwest of the No.1 Zone portal. Source: Rokmaster Resources Corp.