Currently, it is estimated that, of the gold being produced, 50% is used in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry. Brazil has been a gold producer for over two hundred years. According to the World Gold Council, in 2020, Brazil produced 107 tons of gold and was the 7th largest gold producer country. Minas Gerais was the largest gold-producing state in the country, accounting for around 34% of the gold output that year, according to Statista, a market intelligence firm.
Our subsidiary Jupiter Gold owns 132,173 acres of mineral rights for gold distributed in seven projects, six of which are in early stage while one of them, the Alpha Project, has been preliminarily researched and is being developed towards a gold mine. The Alpha Project is located in the state of Minas Gerais at the eastern edge of the Iron Quadrangle mining district, the number one gold-producing region in Brazil.
Jupiter Gold’s 100%-owned Alpha Project encompasses 27,733 acres distributed in twelve mineral rights for gold. Approximately 2% of this total area has been studied over fifteen years ago by a prior owner, by drilling superficial terrain layers of saprolite and colluvium and identifying gold in multiple targets. The technical report produced at that time under the local mining department standard estimated gold mineralization of 64,000 ounces in the researched area with an average gold density of 1.54 g/t; the cutoff used in such report was 0.8 g/t.
In 2020, detailed trenching under the supervision of gold geologists was carried out in approximately 2% of the mineral right area encompassing the Alpha Project. In 2021, Oxford Geoconsultants, a technical consulting firm with a gold expert that meet the “Qualified Person” criteria under Regulation S-K 1300, released its independent technical report on the project under the NI 43-101 industry format. This report presents Oxford’s estimate of 75,018 ounces of gold in indicated and inferred resources for the 2% of the Alpha Project area which was studied.
Jupiter Gold’s technical team has performed additional work in existing shafts located within the 2% of the property that had been previously researched. In 2021, a revised NI 43-101 technical report indicated gold mineralization of 84,000 ounces with a cutoff at 0.8 g/t. RCS, an independent advisory firm, has indicated that the gold deposits at the Alpha Project are of greenstone belt type. Further work is ongoing at the Alpha Project to expand the knowledge of and the measured size of the deposit.