The Gold - NWM Mining’s (TSX: V.COL, Stock Forum), formerly Columbia Metals, flagship project - the Lluvia Jojoba project - is located near Santa Ana, Mexico in Sonora State, just south of the U.S. border with Arizona. This flagship property consists of the past producing Lluvia de Oro gold mine, the Lluvia Shear and La Jojoba deposits and a refurbished ADR gold recovery circuit. The property wide 43-101 compliant resources consist of 148,951 ounces gold in the measured category, 150,516 ounces gold in the indicated category (for a total of 299,467 ounces) plus a further 215,100 ounces gold in the inferred category. The property also hosts copper mineralization. At a cutoff grade of 0.3 g/t gold, contained copper in the La Jojoba resource calculates to 12,129,830 lbs. This contained copper is the reason for the addition of a new SART circuit, which will be operated by BioteQ Environmental Technologies.
The Green - BioteQ Environmental Technologies (TSX: T.BQE, Stock Forum) is a Canadian-based company that has perfected, amongst other applications, the science of using sulfide generated from bacteria to remove dissolved metals from effluents. The variation of the process that is to be used at the Lluvia-Jojoba project is known as the SART process. SART is an acronym for Sulphidization, Acidification, Recycling, and Thickening. SART was developed through a joint collaboration between Teck Corporation and SGS Lakefield Research in Canada back in the late 1990's.
As with conventional gold heap leaching operations, crushed ore is exposed to a sodium cyanide solution, which leaches out gold and if soluble copper is present, leaches out copper as a copper cyanide complex. The resulting leach solution is passed through a CIC (Carbon in Column) system to recover the gold. The solution then passes through the SART facility where copper cyanide complexes are reacted with sulfide ions in an acidic (pH <7) environment. After the copper cyanide complexes are broken down according to the SART process, the contained cyanide is regenerated in leach solutions. The copper sulphide product formed by the SART process will be sold to a copper smelter for cash and the cyanide is recycled back to the leaching part of the process, to recover additional gold. Overall, the SART process can lower operating costs and have a significant impact on the economics of gold deposits containing soluble copper minerals, which were traditionally problematic.
NMW takes the gold and BioteQ takes the copper - As part of the JV for utilization of this unique process and to lower start up costs, BioteQ will be taking 1/3 of gross cash flows until their capex have been paid back. Once BioteQ has recovered its capex, all gold production cash flow will revert back to NMW and BioteQ will receive an ongoing percentage of copper sales revenue - 90% of the first million pounds of copper, 80% of the second million pounds, 70% of the third million pounds and after four million pounds of copper has been produced, BioteQ and NMW will share ongoing future copper revenues on a 50/50 basis.
The Outlook- NMW currently has about 100 million basic shares outstanding and will be starting to pour gold in a few weeks. The shares have been trading in the 15-cent range, which gives NMW a current market capitalization of about $15 million. Given the existing gold resource and the start of the revenue stream, we believe NMW is undervalued at current market, which has not yet valued in any gold revenues and, ultimately, any copper revenues. Assuming the company is successful with this project, it could replicate this at many other sites in Mexico, where this problem exists.
ACORNS TO MIGHTY OAKS – YOU BE THE JUDGE
Charles Hodgkinson owns this stock and is President of Hodgkinson Ventures Inc, a private Venture Capital Investing company and has over 30 years of investment and media experience and can be reached at www.acornstomightyoaks.com