When Canterra Minerals acquired the historic Buchans Project in Newfoundland, they inherited a century of exploration and a great opportunity. With more than 400,000 metres of historic drilling data, the project represented both a remarkable asset and a complex challenge.
DORA, our AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, enabled Canterra’s team to transform this historical data into actionable insights to inform their 2025 exploration strategy. The partnership between VRIFY and Canterra Minerals allowed their team to validate known mineralization zones, reveal overlooked targets, and accelerate decision-making across the Buchans Project.
The Challenge
To capitalize on the significant opportunity presented by the Buchans Project, Canterra Minerals needed to consider some key challenges:
- Synthesizing and cleaning vast historical datasets spanning nearly a century to identify patterns and refine exploration plans
- Validating known mineralization trends while identifying new areas of potential that may have been previously overlooked
- Accelerating time to discovery by prioritizing high-probability areas of mineralization
- Reducing exploration risk through data-derived insights from VRIFY’s Feature Importance Tables to prioritize more valuable exploration techniques at certain targets rather than intuition or past knowledge
Without an innovative, AI-assisted approach, manually analyzing a dataset this extensive would have been prohibitively time-consuming and would have a high likelihood of missing critical geological patterns hidden in the project records.
The Solution
Canterra Minerals partnered with VRIFY leveraging DORA to process and interpret their geological data using AI.
More specifically, by using our AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, Canterra was able to:
- Integrate and analyze over 400,000 metres of historic drilling data alongside comprehensive regional geological and geophysical datasets in weeks instead of months by a team of geologists
- Validate known mineralization trends, independently confirming existing resource potential
- Identify and prioritize new high-potential targets, including underexplored zones that historical campaigns had overlooked
- Streamline the target generation process, providing rapid insights into the most promising areas for 2025 exploration planning
- Identify new prospective areas, including a high-potential zone immediately north of Canterra’s existing claims, which they subsequently staked
The Process
Data Compilation: Canterra collaborated with VRIFY’s technical team to compile, clean, and standardize the extensive exploration dataset.
Feature Processing: Advanced feature extraction processes — strike field analysis, predicted depth to key stratigraphic horizons, and modeled magnetic susceptibility response — were applied to enhance the interpretability of both public and proprietary datasets, allowing DORA to identify key mineralization patterns.
AI-Assisted Feature Identification: DORA identified subtle multiparament signatures and trends that traditional methods might have missed, improving understanding of mineralized zones.
Target Generation and Ranking: Using probabilistic predictive modeling, DORA generated new targets while validating historic resource areas, allowing Canterra’s exploration team to prioritize the most promising drill-ready zones and identify promising new land for staking.
Validation of Known Mineralization: Through DORA's AI analysis and Canterra's validation, the Lundberg deposit was confirmed as an area of significant mineralization, reinforcing confidence in existing resources.
Target Identification: Among the identified targets, the Nu target was highlighted as a high-priority area based on its geological characteristics and similarity to known mineralized zones in the camp, particularly in terms of susceptibility, structural pattern, and potential stratigraphic level.
Feature importance plot for the Nu target.
Informed Decision Making: DORA provided interpretable results for each target that can then inform which type of additional exploration data could help reduce uncertainty.
Continuous Refinement: As new field data is collected, Canterra continues to use DORA to refine target selection, ensuring that exploration remains adaptive, iterative, and optimized for discovery success.
The Results
Leveraging VRIFY’s AI-assisted insights, Canterra solidified and strengthened the foundation of their 2025 exploration strategy.
1. Validation of Known Mineralization:
- AI successfully confirmed the presence of known mineralization, including the Lundberg base metal deposit
- This independent validation of mineralized zones increased confidence in exploration strategies
2. Accelerated Discovery Process:
- AI significantly reduced the time required to process data and analyze drill targets, allowing Canterra’s team to rank and prioritize them within days rather than months
- By using the VRIFY Prospectivity Score (VPS) maps for area prioritization, Canterra was able to advance exploration faster and more efficiently
3. Reduced Risk and Improved Decision-Making:
- Increased confidence in their exploration by ensuring every piece of available data was utilized in decision-making
- Reduced bias and human error in target identification through data-driven analysis
"I am excited to see that initial deployment of VRIFY has not only validated known mineralization but more importantly, identified areas where there is strong potential for discovery of similar high-grade mineralization. We strongly believe this tool will aid in new discoveries within Canterra's project portfolio.
Chris Pennimpede, CEO and President of Canterra Minerals
Read the most recent news from Canterra here
The Future
As a result of DORA’s contributions to their targeting process, Canterra is now:
- Expanding field investigations to include Induced Polarization survey at the Nu target and other high-priority zones identified by AI analysis
- Integrating AI into ongoing exploration programs, ensuring continuous refinement of drill targets
- Strategically prioritizing future drilling campaigns by leveraging AI to identify or confirm high-confidence targets
- Positioned to accelerate resource definition and fast-track development timelines
- Establishing themselves as a technology-forward company in the junior mining sector
By integrating DORA into their exploration strategy, Canterra transformed a data-rich historical project into a focused, high-potential opportunity.
Through this project, Canterra demonstrated how embracing technological innovation can enhance the efficiency of exploration teams, highlighting the transformative power of putting AI into the hands of experienced geoscientists.
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To learn more about how AI is supporting mineral exploration processes, book a demo to see how DORA, our AI-Assisted Mineral Discovery Platform, can help make game-changing insights.
