Reflecting on our busy first 18 months on the market…
Last month, we were proud to announce that we had received exploration permits for our McKellar and Enable projects.
The news may have been a little unexpected to some. After all, we haven’t publicly mentioned the projects for a little while.
But in many ways, I think this is what makes the permits all the more important.
And this is what I’m going to look at today.
You see, on the one hand, we are now able to complete work that has the potential to tell us a great deal more about McKellar and Enable’s mineral potential.
But on the other, the permits also serve as a great reminder of the massive amount of work we’ve been completing both publicly and behind the scenes across our entire portfolio.
By that, I mean both our priority core assets – or the “Big Four” as we call them – and the assets we plan to develop over the longer term. Like McKellar and Enable, for example.
We have maintained this all-encompassing focus since we listed some 18 months ago, and we will continue to do so moving forward.
I believe this is one of the things that separates us from much of the competition – especially in these difficult market conditions.
But perhaps even more importantly, I believe it is also what will ultimately see us deliver the greatest value possible to our investors.
Ahead of schedule
If you’ll step in the time machine with me for a moment, let’s return to July 2022 – the month we listed in London.
At the time, we knew we wanted to search for mineral deposits in underexplored areas of Ontario. We also had a number of projects.
What we didn’t have, though, were permits.
Fast forward to today and things are very different. We now have six exploration permits covering nearly 200km² of land. We also have exploration agreements signed with First Nations for our North Hemlo, Esa, Sugar Cube, Zigzag, and Sunbeam properties.
That alone puts us in a good position. But it gets even better when you consider that;
The permits cover both our core, priority assets (North Hemlo, Esa, Sunbeam, Zigzag) and our periphery assets;
The permits cover ground prospective for a wide range of metals, some we actually only acquired after listing (particularly recently in the case of Zigzag); and
Each permit covers a range of targets we are either already advancing towards drilling or are planning to develop over the short-to-medium term.
To put it another way…
We’re noticeably further ahead than we thought we would be at this stage. And this wouldn’t have been at all possible were it not for a lot of hard work.
Hard work from our CEO Marc, building First Nations relationships to ensure all stakeholders are happy and operations are completed in a sustainable way…
Hard work from our professional partners to ensure all the permit applications and regulatory boxes we have needed to tick have been done so correctly…
And hard work from our guys on the ground, who have explored projects to the point where we have plenty to follow up on once we actually have permits in place.
The next steps
All told, the progress adds up to one key point, one I’ve no doubt highlighted before in this letter: We are very well positioned for the next stage of our growth journey.
After all, the work we wanted to complete on our core projects after receiving exploration permits is already well underway:
Drill operations have commenced on our hard rock lithium prospect at Zigzag;
Stripping and channel sampling have been completed across three zones of interest at Sunbeam;
Stripping has completed and the results of an extensive soil sampling campaign across the 4.5km shear at Esa are on the way; and
An exploration plan for stripping on the Dead Otter Trend is in progress at North Hemlo.
Meanwhile, as we continue to advance the Big Four towards drill-ready status this year (something we’re well on target to achieving), we are also now able to…
Begin plans for stripping at Enable to follow up on confirmed high grade gold and silver within the 5km inferred shear transecting the property; and
Prepare for our next steps at McKellar, where we’ve confirmed a plethora of historic showings including gold, silver, a REE-bearing diatreme and a >400m mineralised trend open along strike containing more than 4% zinc.
All told, this mixture of near-term drilling opportunities and longer-term exploration potential affords us a great deal of corporate development potential. It allows us to be flexible in our response to results across a diversified project portfolio. And this stands to make us as attractive as possible to third parties when it comes to monetizing assets in the event of exploration and drilling success.
These are obviously future steps on our journey.
But for the time being, the strong momentum we have established puts us in an excellent position – even more so if market conditions improve.
