The strategy behind the project was that the geological terrain was analogous to the volcanic island arc setting of the Pacific Rim that has recognised world class gold deposits. Previous historical exploration and investigation of these analogous belts in Turkey had not recognised the potential for development of epithermal style gold deposits.
Eastern Pontides Projects
KEFI Minerals’ Artvin and Gumushane Projects are in the Eastern Pontides volcanic province in northeastern Turkey, which forms part of the Tethyan metallogenic province with numerous historically mined deposits and mines now being developed.
The Eastern Pontides belt has a high level of geological prospectivity for finding three major styles of mineralisation - porphyry copper-gold deposits, volcanic-hosted massive sulphides (“VHMS”) base metal deposits, and epithermal gold-silver deposits.
VHMS deposits hosted in the region include Cayeli with reserves of 11.6 million tonnes at 3.6% copper, 5.9% zinc, 0.6g/t gold and 49g/t silver; Murgul with reserves of 80 million tonnes at 1.1% copper; and Cerateppe with reserves of 1.6 million tonnes at 8.8% copper, 1.1% zinc, 1.4g/t gold and 33g/t silver.
The Artvin Project comprises fifteen exploration licences covering an area of 253 square kilometres on predominantly state forestry land. KEFI Minerals is the first company to utilise modern exploration methods to systematically explore the Artvin Project area.
TSX-listed Centerra Gold is earning an interest in the Artvin Project under the terms of a Joint Venture Agreement announced in October 2008. The funding provided by Centerra enables KEFI Minerals to accelerate exploration at Artvin and an drilling program was comleted in late November 2008.
Areas of extensive hydrothermal alteration have been recognised in the licence area and numerous, small historical base-metal mines. These were exploited by Turkish and Russian miners during the last 150 years. More recently, in the 1990s, the area was explored for copper by Rio Tinto, Placer Dome and BHP, however exploration work was largely reconnaissance in nature. Nuinsco Resources are currently exploring the large Berta porphyry copper-gold prospect which is located adjacent to the southwest corner of the Artvin Project area.
View of Artvin Project with Alteration Zone in Centre of Image
Synthesis of information collected has produced a consistent structural model that explains the controls on mineralisation at the historical mines, explains the location of and the geometry of recently mapped zones of hydrothermal alteration and generated more than 15 new prospects in the Artvin Project area. Initial results during 2007 were very encouraging with channel sampling returning 12m at 5.0g/t gold within a broader zone containing 37m at 1.8g/t gold in a silica-altered zone at the Yanikli Prospect. This zone has a strike of at least 1km and a width of 40m to 100m.
The initial five holes in late 2008 at Yanikli intersected wide intervals of variably altered andesitic volcanic rocks with widespread disseminated and vein-style pyrite-sphalerite (zinc sulphide) with some galena (lead sulphide) and chalcopyrite (copper sulphide).
The Gumushane Project comprises four exploration licences covering an area of 68 square kilometres on predominantly farming land in the Gumushane province of northeastern Turkey. KEFI Minerals has evidence of gold anomalies identified by stream geochemical surveys and zones of extensive hydrothermal alteration have been recognised in the project area, as well as coincident areas of interest identified in the Aster data interpretation.
The Gumushane Project is located within a geologically favourable Jurassic volcanic-sedimentary sequence. The area is conducive for potential bulk tonnage replacement and epithermal style mineralisation. Very little previous exploration has taken place in this area and it should be regarded as grassroots type exploration.
Projects 
