Although based in Vancouver, Sacre-Coeur’s main interest is in Guyana, where it is engaged in exploring and developing properties for gold, other metals and diamonds. We caught up with President and CEO Gregory Sparks at the airport where he was about to board a plane for Guyana.

Gregory has been a mining engineer for around forty years and worked mainly in the gold business. He joined Sacre-Coeur in 2005 as a Senior VP responsible for mining and exploration, becoming President and CEO in January 2010.

Main Activity

The company has an interest in 1,013 square kilometers of mineral properties in Guyana, with the main area of activity, as Gregory explains, being its Million Mountain project: “That’s about a 450 square kilometer contiguous block of properties that contains our preliminary NI 43-101 compliant resource — about a half million ounces of gold. But it also contains, along a twenty kilometer long structural trend within our property block, nine highly prospective zones. In addition, on the Million Mountain block of properties, we have eight alluvial resource blocks, the first of which we will be commencing mining on presently.”

The alluvial resource is, as yet, largely unmeasured. However, Gregory is fully convinced it’s a major asset: “We have many square meters of alluvial resource potential and an average zone thickness ranging from 1.5 meters to about 5 meters. We have just finished conversion of our alluvial testing operation to hydraulic mining methodology for the alluvial zone itself. We stripped the older version with hydraulic excavators and bulldozers.”

A major benefit of the advanced state of the alluvial extraction is that it will provide revenue to fund the hard rock exploration, which is the company’s principal focus. “We’re continuing a very aggressive hard rock gold exploration program,” confirms Gregory. “We’re doing some step-out drilling on our zone one, Million Mountain resource body. That has produced 100 meters of slightly better than a gram, about 1.25 grams to the ton, which we think is exciting in terms of the expansion potential of our zone one resource body.

“Further, we’ve also discovered some empirical evidence through our alluvial mining, which has exposed some bedrock that we are able to map, that suggests a potential for perhaps as much as a half kilometer of our zone one body. So, we’re quite excited about the expansion potential of zone one.

“We also have, in an area we call zone nine in the Million Mountain block, some high grade vein-type occurrences, half a meter or a meter of 85 grams in quite a large number of vein intersteps that are in the plus 30 gram range. We think we have an area of structural complexity nearby that should permit us to enjoy a greater concentration, a higher density of veining and perhaps some mineralization of the wall rock. We’re just now doing some advanced geophysics on that zone nine area to sharpen our target focus for a further drilling program, which will be aimed at developing a resource there.”

Substantial Challenges

Operating in Guyana isn’t necessarily straightforward and Gregory acknowledges that there are substantial challenges to overcome: “The traditional key obstacles to operating in Guyana, and one of the reasons it is so significantly under-explored, is logistics. There is virtually no infrastructure in the interior other than what we develop for ourselves; that is, no roads, trails, no electricity. Very few supplies and equipment pertinent to mining and exploration are available in Guyana, so everything needs to be imported. Although they’re struggling to improve it, the bureaucracy, associated with importing goods and equipment that is essential to mining and exploration, is still a bit frustrating.”

In order to overcome the obstacles, Sacre-Coeur works very closely with a number of government agencies. It has good relations with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission as well as the Guyana Revenue Authority, which is responsible for customs and import matters. There’s also involvement with the Office of the Prime Minister in order, according to Gregory, “to try to smooth out the wrinkles in the bureaucratic path”.

Despite the challenges, Sacre-Coeur operates successfully within Guyana and there are attractions for potential investors. In Gregory’s view, there are two principal factors: “We have, I believe, the largest mineral land holding position in Guyana, an area that’s highly prospective and very under-explored historically. This has the hard rock gold resource potential under-pinned by half a million ounces reported already. The second factor is the alluvial resource potential we have, where we believe that we can fairly rapidly become cashflow self-sufficient.”

These factors are reinforced by extremely cheap extraction costs. “Currently, we’re operating at a little less than $200 US per ounce,” comments Gregory. “Due to a relatively thick alluvial zone, we’re using very simple technology, simple gravity means.” The company’s mining and exploration program is overseen by David Heyl, who joined early in 2010 after a thirty-year career in the business that has seen him working throughout South America. Sacre-Coeur currently has 38 million shares issued and outstanding with a current price of around 74 cents Canadian. This values the company at £28 million.

Acquisition Opportunities

Back in 2005, Sacre-Coeur had substantially more property in Guyana but has gradually worked its way through the portfolio to pare it down. The result is the current holding, which is seen as the most prospective ground from the original portfolio. Nevertheless, the company is always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities, particularly those that will fit in with its existing infrastructure. This means, according to Gregory, that acquisitions will be mainly but not exclusively in Guyana: “Principally in Guyana is our focus now, although our charter provides that we would look at opportunities anywhere in South America. We have so much on our plate presently that our primary focus remains in Guyana.”

With all the activity and the positive developments coming through, he remains optimistic for the future: “We have just over $1 million in cash right now. And we expect, over the course of the next couple of months, to achieve cashflow self-sufficiency. Even though we don’t have a large war chest, we believe we’re in a comfortable position given our pending alluvial position and revenue therefrom.”

For more information: http://www.scminerals.com

Investor relations contact
Scott Young, Corporate Communications
Investor Relations – Canada
Phone: (705) 888-2756
Fax: (604) 899-0200
Email: scott@scminerals.com

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Phone: (604) 899-0100
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Email: lee@scminerals.com