Two copper experts join Kincora Copper—both credited with multiple Tier 1 discoveries

Kincora Copper Limited is pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Leaman as Senior Vice-President of Exploration and John Holliday as Chairman of the newly formed Technical Committee. — Photo: Kincora Copper

VANCOUVER, Nov. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Kincora Copper Limited (the "Company", "Kincora") (TSXV:KCC), following the recent closing of the IBEX transaction (refer November 7th, 2016 press release), is pleased to announce the appointment of Peter Leaman as Senior Vice-President of Exploration and John Holliday as Chairman of the newly formed Technical Committee. The Technical Committee will lead exploration efforts across the expanded portfolio, which following the IBEX transaction has more than tripled in size to over 1,500km2, creating the dominant landholding in the Oyu Tolgoi-Tsagaan Suvarga Devonian copper belt, with multiple targets currently being advanced.

A workshop and field visit including Imants Kavalieris of Plus Minerals, appointed an Advisor to the Technical Committee, has been undertaken reviewing the extensive datasets and targets within the consolidated portfolio. Industry leading specialists and geologists with extensive recent experience in the belt, including Mike Woodbury and Tsolmon Amgaa, in addition to the Technical Committee have established a technical program and schedule to advance priority prospects and a regional pipeline of earlier stage targets, which has recently recommenced.

Sam Spring, President and CEO, stated: "We are extremely excited to have Peter and John joining the Kincora team to lead our exploration efforts. Kincora will benefit from their expertise and previous success in the discovery of gold rich Tier 1 copper porphyries. These appointments and the involvement of such a strong wider team in the development of our work programs further demonstrates technical confidence of further major discoveries in this belt, where Kincora holds a dominant land position, and supports a systematic approach to advancing and testing a number of priority targets.

Kincora is also pleased that Peter and John have agreed to be compensated in predominately equity based remuneration packages, joining existing management and board, and aligning them with shareholders, providing exposure to exploration success while reducing cash burn."

On his new appointment, Peter Leaman noted: "Having overseen BHPB's copper exploration efforts in Mongolia, including the regional Joint Venture with Ivanhoe, and been involved in a number of similar style copper-gold discoveries globally to which are the focus of exploration in this belt, the consolidated Kincora portfolio is extremely interesting and the Southern Gobi the right address for further Tier 1 discoveries.  Extensive datasets for the region have been carefully compiled, and a high level of professional geological understanding and exploration has been applied within the consolidated license portfolio assisting the recent workshop and ongoing field season activities.

The conclusion of the workshop has resulted in a technically sound, systematic multi-phase, multi-target work schedule across a regional license portfolio of a scale last seen in the Gobi under the BHP JV, but looking to implement significant advances in exploration techniques since that period. We expect a number of targets to be identified and advanced from ongoing field activities implementing and integrating geophysics, geochronology and geology."

Background

The Technical Committee has been established to lead Kincora's exploration efforts with Peter Leaman appointed Senior Vice-President of Exploration, John Holliday as Chairman and Sam Spring (Kincora President & CEO), the third member reporting to the Board of Directors.

Mr. Peter Leaman—Senior Vice-President of Exploration, Executive of Technical Committee

Peter has over 40 years' experience in exploration mostly with BHP Minerals, with a particular focus on Base & Precious Metals, and PanAust Limited, where he was Regional Exploration Manager SE Asia and remains an Exploration Advisor.

Peter is a very hands on and target orientated front line leader who has been responsible for project generation, managing mineral exploration programs and regional offices/activities in multiple jurisdictions, resulting in multiple discoveries including the Tier 1 Reko Diq porphyry Cu/Au deposit, Crater Mountain epithermal Au/Ag and Mt. Bini (Kodu) porphyry Cu/Au deposits in Papua New Guinea, amongst others.

Peter managed the BHP Billiton office and exploration teams in Mongolia, which included the joint venture with Ivanhoe Mines (now Turquoise Hill Resources) to explore the Oyu Tolgoi belt for similar deposits, including flying the regional Falcon airborne gravity gradiometer survey, undertaking extensive Induced Polarization (IP) studies and target testing drilling.

Peter is a former Imperial College (M.Sc. mineral exploration) and Leister University (B.Sc. Hons, geology) graduate.

Mr. John Holliday—Chairman of the Technical Committee

John has over 30 years' experience in metals exploration mostly with BHP Minerals and Newcrest Mining, including the positions of Chief Geoscientist and General Manager, Property Generation and more recently in the junior sector. John was a principal discoverer and site manager of the undercover Cadia and Marsden porphyry Tier 1 gold-copper deposits in NSW, and was a principal geological advisor on the acquisition of many significant projects, including Namosi and Wafi-Golpu.

John has worldwide experience in gold-copper deposit exploration, discovery and evaluation, with extensive experience in exploration and discovery of concealed copper-gold porphyries such as those that the Oyu Tolgoi-Tsagaan Suvarga copper belt is prospective for.

John has a geophysics/geology honours degree from Macquarie University and economics/politics degree from Sydney University. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the Society of Economic Geology.

Plus Minerals LLC—Advisor to the Technical Committee

Plus Minerals LLC, including Ms. Khashgerel Bat-Erdene and Mr. Imants Kavalieris, has been appointed an Advisor to the Technical Committee.

Imants has extensive experience in Mongolia and is recognized as one of the industry's leading copper porphyry exploration geologists, having been involved in the exploration and delineation of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold porphyry deposits where he was one of the 6 executive exploration team, and has worked on some of the largest porphyry Cu-Au deposits in SE Asia.

Plus Minerals has considerable experience with both the Kincora and IBEX licenses, having provided consulting services to both entities over recent years, and additionally has a leading knowledge of other existing projects in Southern Gobi region.

Remuneration aligned to shareholders

In light of the IBEX transaction, increase in regional exploration efforts and current market conditions, the Remuneration Committee of Kincora has undertaken a review seeking to provide competitive packages to retain and attract key executives, align all senior executives/directors to the creation of value for shareholders and minimize the cash overheads of the Company.

As a result of such review Kincora proposes to issue shares to the senior executive management, the technical committee and independent directors of the Company on account of a significant portion of their remuneration under Shares for Services Agreements.  In this regard the Company proposes to issue annually shares having a dollar value of up to US$458,160 (CDN$603,000).  Such shares would represent over 70% of the total compensation to be paid to the senior executive management, the technical committee and independent directors of the Company and would be issued quarterly in arrears. The proposed Shares for Services Agreements require TSX Venture Exchange acceptance and, as a condition thereof needs Disinterested Shareholder approval. The Company intends to seek Disinterested Shareholder approval by way of written consent.

It is acknowledged that any Shares issuable under the arrangements detailed above shall be issued at a deemed price equal to the greater of (i) the closing price of the Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange on the last trading day prior to the date such Shares are issuable and (ii) the volume weighted average price of the Shares traded on the TSX Venture Exchange for the 5 trading days immediately preceding the date such Shares are issuable, with a minimum deemed price of $0.05 per Share.

Background to the IBEX transaction

• IBEX's portfolio is focused on porphyry targets to the east and south of Kincora's existing licenses with the consolidated landholding now being the dominant position in the Oyu Tolgoi-Tsagaan Suvarga (Devonian) copper belt.
• A large and high quality regional geophysical and surface geochemical dataset supporting various style targets: i. Devonian porphyries; ii. "Traditional" gold rich copper porphyries; and, iii. epithermal and Carlin-style gold deposits.
• Consolidates a regional portfolio in an underexplored but potentially world-class gold rich copper province analogous to exploring the majority of the Northern Chile copper belt from the 1970's.
• Strengthened team with discovery experience and complementary skill sets for exploration through to project development internationally and in Mongolia.
• Fully winterized camp, fleet, permitted landing strip, IT and exploration equipment.
• Kincora has placed 5,895,000 common shares and 2,947,500 warrants a exercise price of $0.54 (equal to 1.8 times the price per security of the July 28th, 2016, private placement of Kincora) and a term of 24 months into escrow pending re-registration of the IBEX licenses. There is no cash consideration relating to the IBEX transaction.
• It is intended that these Kincora securities will ultimately be held by the shareholders of HPV, the largest of whom are HPX Techco Inc. ("HPX Techco") as to 65.78%, a subsidiary of High Power Exploration Inc., a private company, and GoviEx Uranium Inc., a TSX venture exchange listed company, as to 21.64%.
• HPV will have certain rights to maintain their ownership percentages by participating in further capital raisings and, at a threshold of share ownership, have the right to a board seat.
• A Relationship Agreement with HPX Techco has also been executed which provides Kincora conditional access to HPX's suite of geophysical technologies.

About Kincora

Kincora is a junior resource company engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral properties, with a focus on copper-gold projects in Mongolia. For further information: www.kincoracopper.com.