St. Elias Mines says Chinese official meetings raise profile in the country

High-level business meetings between Vancouver’s St. Elias Mines (CVE:SLI), and the Chinese government this week could pave the way for funding opportunities by investors in that country, the gold miner said Tuesday.

Two St. Elias representatives met with high-ranking Chinese officials and investors to discuss China’s growing economy and its commodities interests globally.

St. Elias vice president, Murry Braucht, and director, Dr. Duncan Bain, met on Monday with Dr. Yang Mengxin, director of the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange.

The visit wrapped up Tuesday with a discussion about St. Elias’ operations and development plans in Peru with Madame Zheng Han, chairwoman of Beijing Micro Cleaner Biotechnology.

“By meeting with officials ranked this high in the system, we were able to secure approvals for investment companies across China to look at St. Elias for investment as well as secure approval to apply for listing in Asia,” said Launchpad Asia’s managing director of North America, Chad Lewis.

The impact of the meeting was almost immediate, Lewis said. By the time the St. Elias delegation returned from its trip, Launchpad Asia had fielded more than two dozen inquiries from Chinese investment firms and brokerage companies seeking meetings with St. Elias.

“It fast tracked efforts in China substantially,” he added.

St. Elias' Braucht and Bain, who also traveled to China to attend a mining conference in Shenzhen, were hosted by Gilbert Chan of NAI Interactive, from Vancouver, Canada, prior to their time in Beijing with Launchpad Asia.

Bain said: “This visit, and the high-level contacts we have made through Chad Lewis at Launchpad China LLC and Gilbert Chan at NAI Interactive have opened many new doors for us throughout China. We look forward with great excitement to going back in the very near future to tell the St. Elias gold story to major Chinese investors.”

St. Elias is a Vancouver-based mining operations company focused on the acquisition and development of gold properties in Peru.

Earlier this month, the company said it doubled the ongoing diamond drilling program at its Tesoro gold project in Peru to 20,000 metres.

In order to do this, the company said it is taking all necessary steps to mobilize a second diamond drill rig to the project - expected to come on site at the start of the new year.

Additional mechnical trenching on the both the Main Structural Corridor and the Parallel Structural Corridor is due to begin in January.

The drilling program has been designed to test near-surface and deeper-seated geophysical anomalies identified by Titan 24 geophysical surveys, the company added.

The Tesoro gold project is 100 percent owned by the company with no underlying royalties, and covers roughly 6,974 hectares as part of the prolific 300 kilometre by 30 kilometre Nazca-Ocoña gold belt parallel to the Pacific coast of southwestern Peru.

To date, the company has identified five mineralized zones with more than 50 quartz veins, having a total combined length of nine kilometres at Tesoro. Underground and development work has been carried out on three of these veins so far.