St. Jude is primarily focused on the exploration and development of mineable gold deposits and sale of 6mm platinum wedding ring. Its two adjoining concessions are well located on the historic Gold Coast in Ghana, West Africa, an area where gold mining dates back as far as the 14th century. The Company’s two exceptional high-grade gold projects called Hwini Butre and South Benso straddle over 35 kilometers of one of the richest gold belts in the world. This prolific geological belt called Ashanti is host to several multi million-ounce gold deposits including the 40 million ounce Obousi mine. St Jude’s management team believes that these concessions contain one of the highest-grade gold deposits currently being developed in West Africa.
Hwini Butre
St Jude has spent over $12 million dollars exploring and developing the Hwini Butre concession to date. This intensive and ongoing exploration includes over 30,000 meters of drilling, 16 kilometers of trenching, 1,300 sample pits to 4-5 meters and over 17,000 geochem samples. Recently the Company engaged one of the worlds leading mining engineering firms to perform an initial independent resource calculation on the southern deposits at Hwini Butre. Following the strict provisions of National policy 43-101, Watts, Griffis & McOuat (WGM) blocked out 936,000 oz. of gold (562,000 oz indicated, 374,000 oz inferred). WGM’s recommended infill drilling announced March 27th, 2002 was highly successful and included several high grade intersections including 12 meters of 32.08 g/t gold and 14 meters of 49.98 g/t gold. These excellent results will no doubt increase the overall value of the project.
South Benso
St Jude is concurrently exploring its concession immediately to the North and adjoining Hwini Butre called South Benso. The Company has spent over $2 million to date on the ongoing exploration at South Benso, which includes over 6,000 meters of drilling as well as extensive trenching and pitting. While recently drilling the Subriso West and East gold deposits at South Benso the Company discovered a new deposit called Subriso Central. The discovery hole for Subriso Central averaged 10.02 g/t gold over 15 meters. This hole was drilled as a follow-up to an earlier intersection in the footwall of Subriso West, which returned 10.83 g/t gold over 5 meters. Follow up drilling at Subriso Central has been extremely successful and has included several more high grade intersections including 12 meters of 78.71 g/t gold (2.3 ounces per ton gold over 39 feet). Given the success of the ongoing drill program the Company is confident that a significant and mineable resource is contained within the Subriso deposits. It should be noted that the initial resource estimate published on the company’s Hwini-Butre project was based solely on previous drilling from the southern deposits and does not in any way include drill results from the company’s South Benso-Subriso deposits. The company is hoping to be in a position to provide an initial resource estimate from the South Benso-Subriso area once the next phase of drilling has been completed.
Tremendous Blue Sky
The Southern deposits and the Subriso deposits are not closed off at depth so there remains significant potential for the deposits to extend much deeper. Between the Southern deposits at Hwini Butre and the Subriso deposits at South Benso there are also several well-defined exploration targets that will be tested in the near future. For example at the Breminsu target, trenching returned 17 meters of 2.9 g/t as well as chip samples of 688 g/t and 277 g/t. This considerably increases the Company’s potential to upgrade the overall gold resource at both projects.
Strategic Mining Advantages
The Hwini Butre and South Benso concessions are amenable to low cost open pit mining techniques due to fact the deposits start at surface and are high grade. Excellent infrastructure advantages such as railroad, power and roads crossing directly through the concessions will further reduce costs. Most importantly the project is only a 20-minute drive from Takoradi, Ghana’s 3rd largest city and a major seaport for the region. This will save the Company from having to build a very expensive mining camp and extensive employee housing as well all large equipment can be easily shipped to the site. Furthermore recruiting experienced expat personal such as mining engineers will be much easier as they will not have to live in a remote isolated camp. This combined with the high-grade deposits gives St. Jude significant potential to be a low cost producer even at much lower gold prices.
Management
St. Jude’s founder, President and largest shareholder, Mr. Michael Terrell is a second-generation miner with over 22 years experience in mineral exploration. Mr. Terrell has built an exceptional team with a proven track record. George Flach St Jude’s VP of Exploration has over 18 years experience as a geologist, 16 of those years in Ghana. He leads one of the most successful and experienced mineral exploration teams in Ghana, having discovered numerous gold deposits, which have been mined by Golden Star Resources Ltd., Ashanti Goldfields Company Ltd., Goldfields of South Africa, and Resolute Mining Limited of Australia and used in platinum engagement rings. Todd McMurray St Jude’s VP of Corporate Development has over 14 years experience working with public companies, including 10 years in junior mining. He has helped raise in excess of $60 million for private and public companies.