If you walked around the recent Cambridge House Canvest2015 show, you'd be forgiven for thinking that mining is officially dead. Those resource companies that showed up were talking to precious few investors, and the only deals being made were the ones involving a broker, an 8-ball and a bathroom stall.
But in talking to those CEOs that did make the trip, it wasn't all nooses and self-harm.
“We're close to the bottom,” said about 11 different CEO's I talked to, from prospect generators to mid-majors, and that thinking was largely echoed by pundits, geos, and industry-dependent media.
“We're seeing the guys with big money – the Lundins and the like – make investments in the discovery end of town,” said a prominent financier on the condition I keep his name out of things, “and they're not flipper deals... these are properties with nice data that others ran out of money pushing forward.”
One of those sits on the mineral-rich Abitibi greenstone belt, which spans across the Ontario-Quebec border, stretching from Wawa, Ontario to Val-d’Or, Quebec. This gold belt is no secret, and in fact has figured prominently in Canadian mining history and featured the Kerr-Addison Mine in Virginiatown, once Canada’s largest gold producing mine.
The region has also garnered a significant spot on the world stage, having produced over 100 mines and 170 million ounces of gold since 1901, pounding out more gold than has been held in Fort Knox. In fact, in 2006, of the over 40 gold deposits worldwide producing more than 10 million ounces of gold, five of those, Hollinger-McIntyre, Kirkland Lake, Dome, Kerr Addison and Horne Mines, were all located in the Abitibi.
Part of the reason why is the quality of the pickin's in those parts. But Quebec's famed love of the act of mining helps. First world infrastructure and ease of delivery doesn't hurt, which brings low development costs and helps ease the pain of recent commodity price issues.
But we've seen all the Abitibi has to offer, haven't we? I mean, folks have been through that ground with a fine toothed comb. What's left?
That depends on what you value. There's not a lot of virgin unexplored territory out there, but there are some operations with data and cores and potential that have been sullied by poor management, or run out of money when the going was good, and some that have more in common with a dog's breakfast than a finely run mining operation.