Harte Gold Corp. T.HRT

Mr. Stephen Roman awarded “Prospector of the year"

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"The next step is to get the bulk sample processed. Roman said, “The bulk sample is expected to produce approximately 25,000 ounces of gold. That should allow us to reinvest the cash flow in permitting and further mine development. We expect the mine to operate in commercial production at six hundred tons per day and produce about seventy thousand ounces annually."

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Harte Gold Corporation (TSX: HRT), Led by Award Winning Stephen G. Roman, Ready to Bulk Sample and Moving Towards Production at the Sugar Zone Gold Project, Located in the Prolific Abitibi Gold Belt, Ontario

 

Harte Gold Corporation (TSX: HRT) is led by CEO Stephen G. Roman, who is being recognized during this year’s PDAC. Harte Gold is currently in position to begin bulk sampling and moving towards production at their Sugar Zone gold project, located in Ontario. The Sugar Zone Gold project is a very high grade, low cost project. Mr. Stephen Roman was awarded the honor of “Prospector of the Year” for 2016 and will receive the “Bill Dennis Award” from the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).



Stephen G. Roman, Chairman, President and CEO of Harte Gold Corporation (TSX: HRT) updated Metals News readers on the progress at the Sugar Zone gold project in Ontario and gave an overview of his career prior to accepting his award at the PDAC.

Roman shared some of the history behind his entre into mining. Said Roman, “To give you a quick background and a bit of history, my grandfather, whose home was in Slovakia, came through Ellis Island three times to work in the coal mines in Pennsylvania. Mining might be in the blood because when my father came to Canada he became a prospector. He found one of the world’s largest uranium deposits at the time, in 1953 and built a town called Elliot Lake, which was the Uranium capital of the world. I first went underground at the Denison Mine when I was five years old. I started working underground at nineteen and earned my Ontario miner’s certificate as a hard rock miner. Subsequently I took geology in school and became the VP of Exploration at Denison Mines.”

Roman has always been interested in exploration. He said, “I always gravitated toward the exploration side of things. I liked being in the bush and I liked looking for mineral deposits, so after my father died in 1988, the management and the Board at Denison Mines changed and my division was shut down in 1990, so I started out on my own. I ended up acquiring a small company that Denison had controlled called Exall Resources Limited. Its origin was the Gold Eagle Mine in Red Lake, Ontario. It was a small mine that operated from 1934 to 1941 from McKenzie Island, in the heart of the Red Lake gold camp. They were mining a small gold vein and ran out of reserves after they had mined about 40,000 ounces.”

The Gold Eagle property lay dormant for decades until Roman purchased Exall Resources Limited in 1992. Roman said “I started to look for investors to do some work on the property. It wasn’t until many years later that I managed to attract investment through Rob Cudney. We ended up finding a new deposit right in the middle of the Bruce Channel. That is the deposit that allowed me to win both, when we found it, Discovery of the Year from the Northwestern Prospectors Association, but then this year, Prospector of the Year. So, it turned out to be a great discovery. We were bought out for $1.5 billion dollars in 2008, just before the crash, by Goldcorp. Goldcorp has been spending money and have rehabilitated the old Cochenour infrastructure they have on the mainland. They have driven a new five kilometer drift from their Campbell Mine all the way to the Bruce Channel deposit”

Roman started working on new business after the buyout. The Harte Gold Sugar Zone deposit was taken over by Roman in January, 2009. He said, “I created a mining house, formed half a dozen new companies that are involved in gold and oil and gas and zinc and uranium. In January of 2009, I was asked by shareholders of the company, Harte Gold Corp, to take over the company. At the time, it owned a 49% interest in the Sugar Zone property and the other 51% was owned by Ned Goodman. His company, called Corona Gold Corporation, had done exploration in the days after Hemlo was discovered. There was exploration by Noranda as well. They actually discovered the Sugar Zone outcrop. They did a limited amount of work on it. When we took it over in January of 2009, the company was on the verge of delisting and the hopes were low.”



That is when Roman took over Harte Gold. He said, “That’s why I was approached by shareholders to see if I could do something with it. So, I put a new team together. We’ve raised about $25 million for the company between then and now. We have done a lot of drilling and a lot of work on the property. Now, of course, the Sugar Zone deposit is well north of half a million ounces. I managed to make a deal with Corona Gold and acquired the other 51% so we have consolidated the interest under Harte Gold. We have 100% now and an advanced exploration and bulk sample program permitted now. The permitting took three years if you can imagine that. We also built a twenty kilometer road into the mine site. We will be into ore in the next two weeks. We have signed a deal with Barrick Gold and we will be trucking our ore to the Hemlo mill, which is about an eighty kilometer drive down our road and then along a highway to Hemlo. They will be processing our seventy thousand metric tonne bulk sample. The plan during that period is to apply for our commercial permits. We would like to move seamlessly from a bulk sample phase into a commercial production phase.”



The next step is to get the bulk sample processed. Roman said, “The bulk sample is expected to produce approximately 25,000 ounces of gold. That should allow us to reinvest the cash flow in permitting and further mine development. We expect the mine to operate in commercial production at six hundred tons per day and produce about seventy thousand ounces annually. It is expected to be a low cost operation. It is a ramp access mine. The ore body outcrops on surface. We have ramped in and left the crown pillar. Now we are developing the ramp and the stopes underground to start mining. We’ve developed a five year mine plan. We have drilled to depth on the Sugar Zone down to one thousand meters, over three thousand feet, and we have hit the ore body at depth with similar widths and grades. This is a high grade, ten gram per tonne ore body. We expect it will grow quite significantly because a couple of years ago we made a discovery about three kilometers away, called the Wolf Zone. The Wolf Zone looks is lining up with the Sugar Zone. During the next phase of exploration, we plan to do some deep IP between the Wolf Zone and the Sugar Zone, then do a drill program between those two areas. This is a two kilometer trend that has not been drilled. There is potential here for a multi-million ounce deposit.”

Other mines in the area are also seeing good production, which makes Roman enthusiastic about the potential for the Sugar Zone. He said, “We are in the middle of a couple of our neighbors. One is called the Westdome Mines and the other is called Richmont Mines and there is, of course, the Barrick Hemlo. The Richmont and Westdome are both mining similar types of shear as we are. Their market caps are significantly higher than ours because they are producing. We expect that our Company will be rerated once we start producing and we show the market that the ore body has continuity and that the grades are there. We are very excited. We are close to getting cash flow starting. We expect to be shipping ore to Hemlo in April, with cash flow beginning in May.”

Financially, the company has moved forward despite challenges in the market. Roman said, “It is tough to be doing equity raises at a time of depressed prices. We have issued shares to get the work done, but we have felt it was better to do that than to stagnate. Once the mine gets into steady state production, we can start acquiring shares back. We’d like to finance exploration further with cash flow rather than dilution. We have about 300 million shares outstanding at the moment. We trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange big board at currently around the nine to ten cent level.”

Roman expects there will be resurgence in the gold sector. He said, “I think the sector has been beat up so badly over the last few years. People have made so much money on other sectors that they are looking for the next place to put some of their profits. It looks like the commodity sector is again looking attractive from an investment point of view. I think many mining companies have taken massive write downs to clean up their balance sheets and they are ready to start generating some serious profits. Many mining companies have disposed of non-core assets and it will excite people that they will have a period here of good profitability. With the gold price moving higher, people are feeling more positive about the sector. Gold itself is a solid investment because governments continue to print unbelievable amounts of money through their quantitative easing programs. Of course, the debt levels of every country seem to be going through the roof. So people are saying, where am I going to have some value that is not going to be eroded by governments? I think that is why people are coming back into the gold sector.”



Why should investors take a close look at Harte Gold? Roman said, “Number one, it is an Ontario project. Ontario is a decent mining jurisdiction. Number two, it is a very high grade deposit, I think one of the highest grade deposits going into production anywhere in the world. Number three, the ore body comes right to surface so costs to produce an ounce of gold should be very low. Our costs are estimated to be about $600 Canadian. So, the project will be very profitable.”

Company Summary:

Harte Gold Corporation (TSX: HRT) is a Canadian-based company that is currently focused on advancing the exploration and production potential of the Sugar Zone gold mining project. The Sugar Zone is 100% owned by the company and is located about 80 kilometers east of the Hemlo Gold Camp.

The Sugar Zone gold project has an indicated resource of 980,000 tonnes with grades of 10.13 grams per tonne for 319,000 ounces of uncapped, contained gold and an inferred resource of 580,500 tonnes, with grades of 8.36 grams per tonne of gold. These numbers have been verified by an N.I. 43-101 compliant resource report.

The company holds additional properties. One is the Stoughton-Abitibi property near the Destor-Porcupine Fault Zone. Most notably, it is near the St. Andrew Goldfield’s Holloway Gold Mine where high grade gold is currently being mined. For more information, visit the company at https://www.hartegold.com/.