Torr Metals: Chasing a Potential New Afton-style look-alike in the Quesnel Trough – Richard Mills

2025.11.22

Today we’re speaking with Malcolm Dorsey, President and CEO of Torr Metals (TSXV:TMET). Dorsey and his technical team are advancing the Kolos Copper-Gold Project in southern British Columbia, located in the epicenter of BC’s copper production: the Quesnel Trough.

The Quesnel Trough — Canada’s copper heartland — Richard Mills

As Dorsey pointed out in a previous Under the Spotlight interview, there are eight major miners, some with producing assets or holding major deposits, as well as one mid-tier producer, New Gold, which owns New Afton, just 30 kilometers to the north of Torr’s Kolos.

At 332 square kilometers, the project has scale.

Under the Spotlight — Malcom Dorsey, CEO, Torr Metals

There is a large concentration of major mining companies in the area for good reason. Highland Valley is Canada’s largest copper mine. Of the 39 copper mines in Canada, four of the top five are in BC.

The majors are looking for additional resources, as well as assets that could provide potential mill feed, as some of them have producing mines such as Teck Resources’ Highland Valley, 30 kilometers to the west of Kolos. New Afton has only got six more year of mine life left, and its mill is currently underutilized.

In total, Torr has identified four undrilled targets at Kolos — Sonic, Bertha, Kirby and Lodi — with surface geochemical anomalies covering a combined 12 square kilometers.

In mid-October Torr started drilling the Bertha target. The inaugural drill program at Kolos was slated for up to seven holes, designed to test the 900m by 500m moderate-to-high chargeability induced polarization (IP) anomaly.

Torr Metals starts drilling Bertha target at Kolos Copper-Gold Project — Richard Mills

At the Bertha Zone, recent rock grab sampling from outcrop on the margins of the IP anomaly returned up to 16.9% copper (Cu) and 8.48 grams per tonne (g/t) silver (Ag). These results come from a series of parallel quartz-carbonate veins extending along a 30-meter strike length within the historical Bertha exploration pit, which reported past production of 30 tonnes averaging 2.14% Cu and 27.43 g/t Ag.

In talking with Dorsey, it’s clear that Torr Metals has an exploration model it is following at Kolos. The first target is Bertha, which as just explained, has a past-producing pit. Sonic will be next.

But the real reason Bertha is the priority is due to potential high-grade “supergene” mineralization, as well as the presence of a “picrite” unit which, combined, present an analog to the nearby New Afton mine.

Finding another New Afton would be an extraordinary discovery, one that has evaded mining companies for decades. Has Torr Metals got a New Afton look-alike at Kolos? Only the drills can tell.

Here’s what Dorsey told me about Bertha in September:

“This supergene-style mineralization is very analogous in terms of host rock style of alteration and mineralization to the New Afton deposit; New Afton being one of the highest-grade copper-cold porphyries in British Columbia. Really, the only other comparable is the deeper sections of the Red Chris mine now owned by Newmont up in northern British Columbia.

“I’m starting at a target that had historical exploration at 30 tonnes at 2.14% copper, we’ve also defined surface mineralization along a strike length of 450 meters to the southwest, indicating a significant untested strike extent.

“None of it has been drilled. We’re the first to do IP geophysics as well. That IP geophysics shows us a chargeability anomaly that’s at least 900 meters in strike length.

We can see it continues for over 600 meters vertical depth, and its dimensions are very similar to the structural controls of what you would see up at the New Afton system.”

Without getting too technical, it’s important to understand what Dorsey and Torr Metals are pursuing at Kolos, starting with Bertha then continuing on to Sonic and the other two targets.

The model

The following three paragraphs are from the July 8, 2025 news release:

“The Bertha Zone represents a highly prospective, underexplored high-grade copper target where recent fieldwork has confirmed supergene-style copper mineralization, primarily sooty chalcocite, native copper, and malachite nodules hosted within brecciated volcanic rocks. This style and setting are geologically significant and comparable to the supergene enrichment zone at New Afton, located just 28 km to the north.”

“Supergene mineralization happens when copper-rich fluids from deeper underground move up through cracks in the rock, usually helped by rainwater or groundwater. As these fluids rise closer to surface, they interact with oxygen and other elements. This chemical reaction causes high-grade copper minerals, like chalcocite, native copper, and malachite, to form near surface.”

“At New Afton, the presence of a well-developed supergene blanket, characterized by abundant native copper and sooty chalcocite, was critical to the early economic success of the mine. This zone accounted for approximately 80% of the initial orebody, enabling low strip ratios, enhanced metal recoveries, and early cash flow. It overlies a deeper primary hypogene copper-gold porphyry system hosted within the Cherry Creek intrusion of the Iron Mask batholith, where brecciation and hydrothermal fluid pulses played a key role in both metal deposition and alteration zoning.”

When we talk about a New Afton style of mineralization, we are referring to the presence of iron-rich picrite forming a barrier to the mineralized flow of hot liquids and the iron acting as a reducing agent. Picrite is impermeable and has a very high iron content. Mineralized fluids are stopped at contact and the iron acts as a reducing agent causing the minerals, i.e., copper and gold, to drop out along contact. While picrite is impermeable it is also elastic, it can fold and have large empty spots within it. These become highly mineralized pods and lenses.

At the New Afton mine, the picrite unit forms a significant southern boundary for the main ore body. This massive, basaltic picrite unit is interpreted to have acted as a chemical and/or physical buffer that helped focus and precipitate the mineralizing fluids. This contact is often a steeply dipping fault zone and is a key structural control on the copper-gold mineralization. The copper-gold mineralization is associated with primary hypogene minerals like chalcopyrite and bornite, and supergene native copper closer to the surface.

The higher-grade mineralization at New Afton occurs in lenses. These high-grade bornite-dominant lenses are often hosted within a broader, lower-grade chalcopyrite-bearing halo, and are found along high-angle faults and brecciated margins of the intrusive rocks. These high-grade zones are described specifically as narrow and discontinuous lenses along high-angle faults, or as high-grade bornite-bearing cores within larger zones. The highest grades typically contain bornite, which is associated with higher copper and gold values compared to the surrounding chalcopyrite-dominant mineralization.

While the high-grade components are in lenses, the bulk of the overall deposit is a large, tabular, nearly vertical, southwest-plunging body that measures over a kilometer along strike and up to 100 meters wide. So, while the main deposit is large and tabular, the highest-grade areas within it are specifically found in more localized, lense-shaped occurrences. Recognizing and mapping the picrite mineralization boundary is crucial for mineral exploration.

A well-developed supergene enrichment blanket superimposed on the hypogene mineralization, and finding the crucial picrite boundary, is a target well worth chasing; Bertha appears to have it (although it is very early stage and needs to have more work), strengthening the potential comparison to New Afton. And let’s not forget there are at least three other large, already identified targets.

The news

On Nov. 19 Torr came out with a drilling update, announcing that 2,100 meters had been completed in seven holes, and that the program is advancing towards 2,800m — a significant increase to the original 1,500m planned. Assays are pending.

According to Torr, Drilling has targeted a prominent moderate-chargeability induced polarization (IP) geophysical anomaly, identified as a supergene oxidation horizon; along with an adjacent highly prospective conductivity–chargeability contact zone (Figure 1, Figure 2), where a picrite unit forms the footwall to the oxidation horizon.

In addition to the broad chargeability anomaly, the Company interprets this contact as a major redox and structural interface that served as a focal point for hydrothermal supergene copper mineralization, a geological setting analogous to the upper levels of the New Afton Copper-Gold Mine2, located approximately 28 kilometres to the north-northeast.

This is the more technical version of the model described above.

So how did Torr do?

The news is carefully worded, but it’s clear from talking to Dorsey in the interview below that they encountered the coveted supergene oxidation to a depth of 450 meters and drilled into the picrite contact at the footwall.

Here are the highlights:

• Chargeability Anomaly Indicates Scale Potential and Strong Structural Controls: The overall geometry of the chargeability anomaly appears controlled by the contact with the footwall picrite unit, identified by its strong conductivity (Figures 1, 2).

• Highly Prospective Redox and Structural Trap: The contact between a reducing picrite and an oxidized intrusive–volcanic complex defines a prime redox boundary where copper-bearing fluids are reduced to produce native copper and chalcocite, a key process observed within supergene environments such as at the Bertha exploration pit and New Afton. 

• Drill Testing Confirms Depth and Orientation of Targeted System: Torr has drilled across the moderate dips of the chargeability anomaly and picrite boundary in both the northern and southern areas to depths >400 vertical metres (Figures 1, 2). Hole 25-KO-07 is advancing to greater depth to evaluate potential down-dip extensions of the main system. Additionally, a >300-metre step-out to the west at the Bertha South occurrence is planned to test the along-strike and down-plunge extensions of the chargeability anomaly.

“With approximately 2,100 metres drilled at Bertha and plans to extend the program to 2,800 metres, we are steadily defining a system that exhibits strong comparisons to the redox and structural framework that is described at the nearby New Afton Copper-Gold mine,” Dorsey commented in the news release. “Having now completed drilling across the initial width of the target area, our focus shifts to a major step-out to the west to evaluate the down-plunge and dip extent of the system beyond 500 metres. The presence of high-grade copper at surface in the Bertha exploration pit highlights the importance of testing both the picrite contact and the adjoining large, structurally controlled chargeability system to depth, further emphasizing Bertha’s potential as a significant hydrothermal–supergene copper-gold target.”

The bottom line for me? Dorsey and his team at Torr Metals came up with an original, unique-for-the-area exploration model to test for supergene and hypogene mineralization at Bertha and they succeeded.

Read the interview below to find out more about this exciting drill play, which is getting more interesting by the week.

Richard Mills, Editor/ Publisher, Ahead of the Herd:

Hi Malcolm, I’d like to start by reading from your news release: “Drilling has targeted a prominent moderate chargeability-induced polarization geophysical anomaly identified as a supergene oxidation horizon.” Did we prove the model?

Malcolm Dorsey, President and CEO, Torr Metals:

Well, basically that’s what’s showing up within all the cores, that style. That’s what we had seen within the Bertha exploration pit. And then that’s really continued and we’re still in it.

RM: How deep is the horizon so far?

MD: Within the news release, we’ve tested I’d say up to about 450 meters vertical depth. But with this most recent drilling, we’re planning to go deeper than that, because we see a continuation.

RM: You’re saying we have supergene oxidization down at least 450 meters?

MD: At least.

RM: Chalcocite and native copper?

MD: That is what we were testing based on the exploration pit, so yes.

RM: How come you didn’t say that?

MD: I think there’s enough there in the news release to state that we are seeing consistency with what we saw in the exploration pits, but details will come. At this time, I don’t want to provide location of mineralization or photos as those would not develop the full context, whereas assays will.

RM: I agree 100% with you. But we’re in it, we have got supergene oxidation down 450m. Is there any indication of hypogene?

MD: That is why we’re stepping out, going to the west on the Bertha South occurrence. Because essentially what we’ve identified here are the two main structural controls. There’s one that’s going northeast, one that’s going northwest.

They’re dipping moderately towards each other, and that’s actually forming a lineation that’s controlling the breccia zone, essentially. And that’s plunging off towards the west as well. So, if we’re following the model and we’re stepping down, going deeper and deeper, the idea here is that with the eighth drill hole at Bertha South, that we might plug into something that looks perhaps a little more of a transitional zone.

So, a mixture of this supergene-style oxidation, mineralization, together with some characteristics of what you might see within a hypogene zone. With that, we’re looking to see some shifts within the mineralization. Seeing perhaps a bit of a phyllic alteration zone, so some pyrite content, as well as looking for some changes in the style of mineralization from more of that native copper chalcocite to something more like chalcopyrite.

RM: The news release does say we’re drilling through supergene oxidation.

MD: Yes, I saw on CEO.ca that you spotted that. That basically is what this chargeability anomaly is associated with is that supergene oxidation zone.

RM: Without understanding how the copper came to be there, you simply cannot drill and explore in a correct way. You had a particular exploration model for the district, and than focused on a model for exploration of Kolos, and then Bertha.

MD: Yes, I developed an exploration model for the region. It was really looking at it from a larger-scale conceptual piece. Of course, when you’re looking at large scale, what you’re looking at for the most part is you’re looking at the regional geology, regional structures, but also a lot of what’s going to lead to the interpretation of that is what is the underlying regional geophysics? What we do have available in British Columbia is a very good regional geophysics database that the government has conducted over the years.

In this area, you’ve actually got some really good Bouguer gravity geophysics. Bouguer gravity is really good at showing you the difference with the densities. It’s good at delineating large-scale structures. It’s good at delineating large-scale intrusive bodies. So, with that, when I was looking at it, and with the thought process towards the distribution of porphyries in this region, it’s really arranged along a north-south trend. Really, we could extend it all the way from Copper Mountain.

You go all the way north, ending around New Afton. At New Afton, you end up with more of a northwest-trending transverse offset in a large regional structure. Then you have a continuation of that north-south porphyry trend, which is more along the lines of where Fortescue Metals has more recently ended up staking.

It’s really checking out the continuation of that north-south porphyry distribution. Some of the precursor would be when we were looking at our Kirby and Lodi targets. When we first staked the property back in 2023, that allowed some geochemical compositional studies.

Just looking at these intrusive units on the property that we knew were dated based on government data around the Late Triassic. But once we really started digging into them, doing comparisons, we were realizing that this distribution of intrusive units, they really compositionally look a lot like the Iron Mask Batholith. It looked like a continuation of the Iron Mask Batholith. Outside of that trend, historically where it’s delineated, is basically between New Afton going southeast towards Ajax. South of that has been just a big question mark. That’s what we ended up staking.

Going back to that Bouguer gravity geophysics, what it showed was you actually get the same trend, so northwest, southeast, of this large intrusive unit that underlies the Bertha target. It’s a very similar signature in the Bouguer gravity geophysics to what you see over at New Afton. That, at the broadest scale, just gives you somewhere to vector in towards. Then you walk on the ground, you look at what’s there. The Bertha exploration pit had a tremendous outcropping there with the exposure. I was able to see right away that there was a picrite unit, which I knew to be the main barrier boundary in which the mineralization at New Afton was concentrated along.

That immediately piqued my interest, and I wanted to do some IP geophysics.

RM: Right. I’m going to ask you a question about the Bertha, but internally there is a east/ west line as well.

MD: Yes, within these systems you have the intersection of that north-northeast regional structure with northwest subsidiary structures, they’re transverse faults usually. These create this east-west-trending dilational zone. That’s key to identify because that dilation allows for the intrusions, the upwelling of these intrusive units that can host these porphyries.

They’ll come up through that as a primary control. I saw that when I was looking around staking the Sonic Zone and then looking as well to the continuation of the trend from the Sonic Zone. It was trending towards the west-northwest, so towards the Bertha Zone, so it delineates the 10-kilometer trend of high-grade copper and gold occurrences.

The majority have never been drilled other than the Plug and Meadow Creek epithermal gold-silver occurrences, which are just to the west of our Sonic Zone by Highway 5. But what I was interested in was really looking for that New Afton potential. There looked to be a strong structural link between the Bertha Zone and New Afton.

RM: You’ve drilled eight holes into Bertha, we’ve got three back, and you’ve gone deeper and you’ve done a step-out. What have you proved so far at Bertha?

MD: I think what it really suggests, and I’ve mentioned it to you before, is looking for those symmetries in the analogs that you’re looking for. So, looking for those symmetries in the structural controls, not just that they are related but also that often there is a repetition. But there is a very concise repetition that occurs.

The distribution is fairly predictable. I’d say it’s been that, and the model looks to be confirming this predictability. And with that, also the model, I think, is showcasing that what we’ve got here, especially within the northern portion of the Kolos Copper-Gold Project, is a potential continuation or second trend of where you have intrusives that are of the same age composition as what you would see at the Iron Mask batholith.

RM: That’s so important because the Iron Mask is the host, and the source intrusive, to both New Afton and the Ajax copper-gold porphyry deposits.

I’m just going to do a little bit of future-looking stuff. If the assays come back and we have the supergene and we have it to depth and the step-outs, whether they hit or not. Once you’ve got all the results back, and they’re positive, what are the next steps?

MD: The goal of this drill program is within 2,800 meters, looking to define, I’d say, potential for mineralization up to a 400-meter strike length, as well as that it can continue to depth, so up to 450 meters, and that it’s also continuous going down plunge.

Now, with this testing at down plunge, what we’re looking to do is actually go beyond that 450m. So, we’ll show that this thing actually continues going further to the west, we’ll have to see what we encounter, but if it indicates as well that we start to hit the hypogene zone, then we can showcase that here we’ve got the vertical succession that we expected.

That uppermost supergene zone, we’ve got a good plug on where the orientation of this system is. So, we can showcase as well that we have the capability to just step out over 300m to the west, drill, and hit the same thing. And this is really based off of the geophysics.

We’re seeing very good responses to the geophysics. We’re seeing reasoning for the geophysics. The geophysics is very consistent and provides the predictability that we need for future drilling.

So, we’ll outline the initial potential scale of what this system could be. Of course, there’s probably going to be room to grow on that because it’s only 2,800 meters of drilling. But then we can start filling it in. Once we get the assays back, we’ll know how to most efficiently drill the rest of the system. We’ll know what type of alteration zones return the best grades. And with that, we can really concisely start to drill it and fill the space in between, as well as really testing further to depth in future.

RM: So positive results…

MD: Have the potential to provide another New Afton. But essentially what we’re drilling with this 2,800m is to define right off the bat that this thing has the same scale potential as New Afton.

Once we have the assays back and we can put that together with what we’ve observed within the core, then at that point I think we’ll be able to make some comparisons and really demonstrate to the market at that point of how this thing, or if it really does, compared to New Afton.

RM: Right now, would you say this thing’s as big as Afton? We don’t know the grade, but with what you’re looking at right now, would you say this thing is the tonnage of a New Afton, or close to it?

MD: When you look at New Afton, the average width of the orebody is about 100 meters. So, if you look at the chargeability anomaly, for the most part, it averages somewhere around 150 to 200 meters in width.

With the drilling that we’re doing here, we’re looking at where within that chargeability, or is it the whole chargeability, that we see this New Afton-type system potential?

Just based on the chargeability alone, should it be positively correlatable to alteration or mineralization, then it certainly has, just geophysics-wise, has that potential for the same scale as New Afton, which is something that I’d pointed out before and something that you always need to look for as well. First, looking at the geophysics, the geochemistry, and then later on the drilling and what you’re doing with the drilling.

Are you defining something that actually has the scalability of what you’re talking about? This thing certainly does when we point it out and look towards New Afton.

RM: What was the difference in the size of our IP to what New Afton’s got?

MD: That is an interesting question. New Gold and their predecessors to New Afton have closely guarded their IP data for decades.

None of that is publicly available other than the first initial IP surveys that were done back in the 1960s. I’m familiar with the group that did those IP surveys and other projects that they did it on. And even though it’s the 1960s, it’s certainly worthwhile to utilize it as reference material because it’s actually quite consistent even with modern geophysical methods.

So, with that, in terms of the size, I was using some of that as a reference as well as there is a publicly available study, which I’ve referenced a few times that was actually looking at the resistivity and conductivity of the New Afton deposit. That’s a little bit different from chargeability, but when you’re looking at the size dimensions of that system, when you’re just looking at the conductivity and the resistivity, it’s very comparable to what we see in terms of the chargeability anomaly.

Keep in mind that our chargeability anomaly at Bertha also is coincident with the resistivity anomaly, which was something that they saw within the supergene sections of the New Afton system. It’s a resistivity that’s not suggestive in the uppermost portions of an intrusive unit, but it does suggest secondary porosity. So New Gold’s interpretation of that was that it was an indicator of secondary porosity, creating that resistivity anomaly.

But in terms of chargeability, I’m not too sure what New Gold has or what they’re working with, with their more modern surveys they have conducted.

RM: I’ve heard people claim New Afton-style mineralization, but when you get right down to it, it’s not. You have to have the picrite boundary. And they just didn’t have it. But it appears that we do. So, if we do have a New Afton-style deposit here, I believe it is going to be incredible for Torr Metals, but what does it do to the thinking about the whole general area? Your model is not accepted mainstream theory. It’s different. So, what does it do to that area in BC? Does it open it up to a new approach?

MD: I think it certainly does. The exploration model that I’ve employed here was developed by myself and my brother Cameron Dorsey. Cameron is VP-Ex for Golden Sky Minerals, who has the Rayfield Project just to our north.

We developed it over several years, being familiar with the southern BC area and doing exploration in this region for a long time. My master’s thesis was based in southern BC, looking at large-scale tectonic structures. It was really looking at where has been the historical focus around New Afton? How have they been looking for another New Afton-type system? It’s been largely focusing on that northwest-southeast trend.

It trends all the way down towards Ajax. The Ajax deposit also has a picrite unit adjacent to the orebody. And it was just following that northwest southeast. So, people weren’t really looking to the south, because that just was not the thought process towards the trend of these systems.

I think should we find something that’s comparable at Bertha, then that’s certainly, I think, going to add further fuel to the fire of where and how are these porphyry systems controlled and distributed? I think it is becoming perhaps a little more mainstream now, the thought of this north-northeast trend controlling the distribution.

And, in fact, if you follow to the south of us, you’re going to come across other names like Kodiak Copper, Viszla Copper, all the way down to Copper Mountain/ Hudbay. We’re all distributed along the same north-south trend. So, I think it will certainly add credence to that thought process.

RM: Let’s move to Sonic Zone. When are we expecting to have drills turning on Sonic, and what are we hunting for?

MD: Sonic is bout 5 kilometers to the east of the Bertha target. It’s just on the east side of Highway 5. What’s there is much more of what I’d say is a classic alkalic copper-gold porphyry-style system exposed at surface. So where is Bertha? The New Afton potential there is that you’re looking at mineralization that’s concentrated with this brecciation along this picrite boundary coming to surface, and then this vertical zonation from supergene down to hypogene as you go deeper.

Whereas at the Sonic Zone, if you follow the same north-northeast trend and you go the same distance from our Sonic Zone as New Afton is from our Bertha target, about 30 kilometers, you actually end up at the Ajax deposit. So that, I don’t think, is by pure coincidence when we’re looking at Sonic. It’s the same thing, looking at that symmetry and structure.

We’re seeing very similar styles to what you might see within the Ajax. system. So, with that, it’s a larger scale than what we’ve got over at Bertha. We’ve got a geochemical soil anomaly with soils just over 4,500 ppm copper and a copper soil anomaly that’s about 4.5 square kilometers in size.

That’s a historical anomaly that was found just to the north of what we’re calling our New Sonic occurrence. The Sonic occurrence itself is something that we discovered back in 2024. So new exposures along logging roads, large-scale alteration footprints.

Here we see much more of the classic porphyry alteration footprint. So, we’re seeing really widespread phyllic-style alteration with lots of pyrite. And we’re also seeing lots of clay alteration together with potassic alteration that’s more of the biotite phase. This is all very similar, again, to something like Ajax. Then we collected some good grade samples out of vein systems adjacent to silica aplite dikes that are also an interesting feature of the Ajax deposit.

Because similarly, Ajax has both a northeast and a northwest orientation to the orebody. So that’s something that we’re looking for here. We know from the historical soils that there definitely is a northeast trend.

Going further to the south, we’ve collected 1,500 more soils this past fall. Those soils are testing out what is the extension of this potential northeast trend to the mineralization? And then also testing for a northwest trend, because that’s the orientation of the mineralization that we’ve measured along these intrusive units that are exposed there.

We’re very excited about Sonic. What we can be defining here is something that would have the potential for a larger tonnage porphyry system. Something like New Afton is only about 100 million tons, but it’s very high grade.

Something like Ajax is more mid-grade but much larger tonnage, so just over 500 million tons.

RM: And we’ll be drilling that when?

MD: We’re just working through the permitting process right now. We’re anticipating that we should have a drill permit for the Sonic Zone by spring of this year.

The thought process there would be that we can return in the spring. With that, we’d be looking to do additional drilling at the Bertha Zone. Of course, by then we’ll have assays so we can really effectively drill and follow up on what we’ve done at Bertha.

Then we’d be looking to do a little bit of drilling as well in the Sonic Zone just because it does have the potential for a large tonnage, mid-grade copper-gold porphyry system.

RM: We’ve often talked about porphyries, about dilution, the need to drill a lot of holes to define a resource does that. I don’t think that’s the situation with Bertha, but it might be at Sonic.

MD: That’s a good question. And that’s something as well that I see in terms of the junior explorer space.

Really for a junior explorer to go after something larger-scale like the Sonic target, if it does turn out to have a very large-scale alkalic copper-gold porphyry system, that’s a very big thing to go and tackle as a single junior explorer, which is why the first focus here has been at Bertha. Because if we do find something that’s got New Afton potential, New Afton to date I believe altogether has about 300,000 meters of drilling on it. The majority of that has been underground, done post open-pit mining in the 1970s.

Bertha is smaller tonnage, 100 million tons, it requires much less drilling to define the potential of it. So that’s why we’re focusing on that, because if we can define something that’s mid-tonnage but very high grade, we can drill that ourselves without having to heavily dilute. And then it really showcases the potential that we’ve got something that I know several majors within the region are looking for, very actively.

If we do a little bit of drilling at Sonic, the intent there would be to showcase the potential size of the system. That would just be showing that, look, we’ve got potential here for another New Afton-type system at Bertha. This is something that several majors are looking for within the region, so it’s going to be highly attractive for potential takeover or acquisition.

But then leave a whole lot of meat on the bone for them. When you have the Sonic Zone just to the east, it could showcase another large porphyry system there that’s additional upside. And then don’t forget as well that we’ve got the Lodi and Kirby targets.

They’re similar as well to the Sonic Zone, more of your classic exposures of this multi-phase, multi-centered porphyry-style system, alkalic copper-gold. We’ve got three additional targets in addition to the Bertha target. So, we start with that mid-tonnage high grade, and then we can showcase that there’s also potential here for three potentially larger tonnage-type targets at Lodi, Kirby, and Sonic.

RM: It would potentially feed into the same mine, right?

MD: Yes, potentially. And that’s the key here as well is that where we’re sitting, we’re surrounded by three operating mines. There’s Highland Valley, 30 kilometers to our west, New Afton, 30 kilometers to our north. And then Copper Mountain, 100 kilometers to our south. Not to mention we’re in a district where nine major mining companies are focused.

Most recently I would count Coeur Mining and the fact that they put in an offer on New Gold, who holds the New Afton deposit. So $7 billion to acquire New Gold and New Gold all they have is the New Afton mine and Rainy River deposit. That’s a gold mine that they have in the Dryden district in Ontario.

So really, I think it showcases the appetite and as well, the need for additional near-term feed. So, if you have another New Afton-type system that you’ve just discovered together with potential for another Ajax-type system over at Sonic and then something else, perhaps a little smaller scale at Lodi and Kirby, then I think that’s plenty to offer that would be highly attractive.

RM: You could even send the ore to another company’s mill, have a toll milling arrangement.

MD: Oh, certainly, even New Afton, their mill, I believe is running at only about 85% capacity currently. They were talking for years about expanding it further, but they’re not even meeting, I think it’s 16,000 tonnes a day. So, with that, they’re not at full capacity as is.

Some of that was also based off of feed coming from Gold Mountain, which has recently gone into receivership. So, with that, I believe they’re going to be at even lower capacity. You find something new that’s next door only 30 kilometers away, and that’s going to really catch interest.

RM: I see a very intelligent approach to not just Bertha or Sonic, but to the whole project, the whole Kolos Project in that I think that what we’re looking for here is you’re setting yourself up to maximize a buyout by drilling Bertha first, which to me is a stand-alone target that Torr Metals can develop themselves. I mean, there’s a thing here too that they let you work on these things and realize you’ve got to put 600-plus holes into it to get an initial MRE [Mineral Resource Estimate]. And they come in and they partner with you for literally pennies on the dollar or you’re going to blow out your share structure.

But by the approach that you’ve taken, if Bertha is what we think it is, it’s a stand-alone target that a junior can afford to develop themselves, and you could afford to sit on your other projects while you work on Bertha. You’d be able to raise plenty of money for it is my thinking. And we’re not forced to sell to one of these majors in the area or mid-tier because we’re just going to dilute ourselves to death and end up with hardly an ownership, really.

This is the approach to take, it is the right approach.

MD: Oh, definitely. That’s been the thought process of it’s very difficult to take on very large-tonnage porphyry targets. But the fact that we do have three additional ones with Sonic, Kirby, Lodi, those three are all very compelling targets as well.

But the one that I think will deliver the most near-term value here and demonstrate that this is something that Torr can advance with, and we can do it ourselves, is Bertha. And then you’ve got those other three that are sitting in the pipeline as well, which is going to add further value to the project.

RM: Yes, it’s just a way to prove to these people that we don’t have to get taken out. If it happens, it’s going to be on our terms, not on your terms.

MD: Definitely.

RM: Okay. Malcolm, did you want to say anything for final?

MD: I think that was really good coverage. And really, where Torr is sitting at right now is in that pre-discovery phase. So, this is the opportunity. And then we’re looking towards assays coming out, we’ll see with the turnaround time here. We’re pushing as hard as we can to get them through the lab as quickly as possible. There is potential here that if we were to get some assays back in the near term, we’d be looking to get those out possibly early before Christmas. So, we could be looking at early December or so.

And then we’ve also got further assays that will be going out in the new year, so January, February. And then, of course, we can mobilize very early back to site. So, with that, we always have the optionality of being able to come back in, whether that’s February or March. It could be something that we’d be looking towards.

RM: I’m going to wrap it up there, thanks for the time.

MD: Yes, thanks Rick for lining this up again.

Torr Metals
TSXV:TMET
2025.11.21 Share Price: Cdn$0.15
Shares Outstanding: 31.8m
Market Cap: Cdn$7.8m
TMET website 

Richard (Rick) Mills
aheadoftheherd.com

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Richard owns sharhes of Torr Metals (TSX.V:TMET). TMET is a paid advertiser on his site aheadoftheherd.com This article is issued on behalf of TMET