Dan Symons

Dan Symons is President, CEO and a director of C3 Metals Inc. (TSXV: CCCM; OTCQB: CUAUF), a Toronto-based mineral exploration company drilling for large copper-gold deposits in southern Peru and Jamaica. Two facts make him relevant to resource investors: C3 Metals explores in the Andahuaylas-Yauri porphyry-skarn belt of southern Peru — the same belt that hosts Hudbay Minerals' Constancia mine, MMG's Las Bambas and Glencore's Antapaccay — and Symons negotiated the agreement that brought Freeport-McMoRan onto the company's Bellas Gate project in Jamaica.

Symons has spent about 20 years in mining corporate development. He began his career in investor relations at Renmark Financial Communications, then served as Vice President, Business Development and Investor Relations at Romarco Minerals and as Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Argonaut Gold. Across those roles he was involved in M&A transactions totalling more than $950 million, plus equity financings of more than $650 million and debt financings of more than $500 million. He joined C3 Metals as President, CEO and director in September 2022.

At C3 Metals his approach pairs systematic drilling with deal structures that limit shareholder dilution. In Peru, the 100%-owned Khaleesi project had returned intercepts of 164.6 metres at 0.35% copper equivalent (CuEq — a single grade combining the value of copper, gold, silver and molybdenum into one copper-percentage figure) and 119.5 metres at 0.30% CuEq by September 2026, with skarn (ore formed where intrusive fluids replace limestone) and porphyry-style copper mineralization defined to about 500 metres vertical depth, open to the north, east and west. The flagship Jasperoide project in the same belt carries a maiden mineral resource estimate — a tonnes-and-grade inventory prepared under NI 43-101, Canada's mining disclosure standard — of 51.9 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 0.50% copper and 0.20 g/t gold, effective May 2023.

In Jamaica, he structured the Freeport-McMoRan earn-in — a deal in which a partner funds exploration to earn an interest in a project — under which Freeport can spend up to US$75 million to earn up to 75% of the 13,020-hectare Bellas Gate project. The ground holds 14 porphyry and more than 30 epithermal prospects along an 18-kilometre trend, and C3 Metals remains operator through the first US$25 million stage.

Investors who follow Symons see how a junior explorer allocates a small budget: drill where geology and geophysics agree, then bring in a major's capital when a target needs more than equity dilution should carry. Technical direction comes from Vice President Exploration Stephen Hughes, a porphyry-skarn geologist with 12 years at Freeport Indonesia's Grasberg mine. Symons' current focus is step-out drilling at Khaleesi, where new drone magnetic and gravity surveys are flagging the next targets, and advancing Bellas Gate under the Freeport agreement.