pierreg wrote: Very insightful RNC Minerals interview by Mike Coyle of Insidexploration with Mark Selby June 27th 2019. Video & and my transcript.
Video: https://insidexploration.com/mike-coyle-interviews-mark-selby-on-the-new-resource-update/
My transcript:
Mike Coyle: « Hi I’m Mike Coyle with Insidexploration and I’m here today with Mark Selby of RNC Minerals listed on the TSX under RNX. I’m very excited about todays news. So, 390% increase in the Resource update. Do you want to tell us a bit about this? »
Mark Selby: « From the beginning we’ve talked about that we believe that Beta Hunt could be a very large gold resource. Today is a big step forward. Basically adding 700,000 ounces of M & I, another 250,000 ounces of Inferred at a discovery cost of less than 5 $ an ounce. That’s only on one kilometre of strike length at about at about 150 to 250 metres deep. These structures are sitting in a big blob of Basalt that we think go for a kilometre or two and these type of deposits in Timmins and Abitibi easily extend for those kind of distances. We’ll have to see what drilling shows. We’re very hopeful that this is the first of what would be many, many Resource updates to come in the future. »
Mike Coyle: « This news release did not include the A Zone at all. This is specifically the Western Flanks? »
Mark Selby: «Yeah, strictly the Western Flanks. A Zone update what we’re doing is have two releases filed in one Technical report which will be issued 45 days from now. So, the A Zone release will be out sometime in the first part of August. A Zone is a narrower structure so we’re not going to see a big number but we should see a decent increase in the resource there as well also and a decent upgrade as well. »
Mike Coyle: « Just speaking of the A Zone, everybody wants to know what’s going on underneath the A Zone. You hit 1,000 ounces of gold. Has that number changed at all and where about are you with those ore drives? »
Mark Selby: « Yeah, so we’re continuing along the 16 level. We picked up as we’re sorting through the material, we picked some more little nuggets as go. Nothing material otherwise we would have disclosed it. But again, I think the key thing there is we’ve gone at it three times, we’ve hit it three times. We’ve pulled out at least 1,000 to 2,000 ounces per level. On a 5-metre level we still have 20 metres in between each level. So, just stope out. We’ll see with that. »
Mike Coyle: « Is that all in the sedimentary layer that you’ve hit them? »
Mark Selby: « That’s in the area where the sedimentary layer intersects the shear. »
Mike Coyle: « So that sedimentary layer is how many metres thick? »
Mark Selby: « It’s fairly narrow it’s only 30 to 60 cm thick and it gets pulled through the shear. So again, it doesn’t take much iron precipitate too much gold out of solution. »
Mike Coyle: « So, production wise what are you looking at for Q3? »
Mark Selby: « As we’ve said before basically sort of ramped up to this interim level where we’re producing roughly 40,000 tons a month. We expect this to continue through Q3. By the end of third quarter, we’ll have an updated mine plan based on the resources that we’ve just defined and again, looking forward to that. This will be the first reserve for Beta Hunt. It’ll be a multi year reserve and from that, we’ll just need to understand how quickly we ramp up. Because it will just be a function of how much development we do up front, how many mining phases we open up front. »
Mike Coyle: « So having said that you’re working on Baloo as well simultaneously. Where are you at with that project? »
Mark Selby: « With Higginsville acquisition gone well, we scraped a little bit of ore at Baloo as we’re doing a pre-strip. But right now, we’re doing grade control drilling and then, the plan is to ramp that up by September. From Higginsville, we’ll probably look in the order of 10,000 to 15,000 ounces come from both Baloo and what is left of Mount Henry during the remainder of the year and then, on a go forward basis we'll see. Baloo is open in multiple directions and so we’ll continue to drill that off and we think that'll be a nice, good longer-term source of feed for the mill and again, on that land package there's lots of little open pits. They have potential as well, so we'll do a little bit of drilling to see about bringing some of those low-cost higher value open pits into plan as well. »
Mike Coyle: « So you somewhat answered my next question on that. What are your exploration plans for the land package that you just acquired? Are you going for that and are you extending your drilling program at Beta Hunt? »
Mark Selby: « Yeah so again, the primary focus is going to remain from an exploration perspective It's going to be Beta Hunt. Now we'll do a little bit of drilling at Higginsville to look at bringing some open-pit tons that are nearby the mill into the mill and, that'll be the primary focus of that. The nice thing with Beta Hunt again, with the scale of the resource that we just added at Western Flanks and the fact that we have thousands of gold intersections from the historic nickel drilling that we think outlying four separate shears.
We’re now getting into what I think is gonna be the most interesting part of the drilling where we're gonna take that final 5,000 meters and we're gonna test Fletcher. We're gonna test East Alpha. We're gonna look at significant up dip extensions much closer to surface on the A Zone and then, start to eventually look south the Alpha Island fault in terms of what those structures go there. Because again, everything to date is on one side of the Alpha Island fault which is just two kilometers worth of strike length. There's gold intersections for another three kilometers and fundamentally at the end of the day we believe this could be a large resource. You have a five-kilometer ramp system sitting directly above that resource that would cost you 400 million $ to replace. Even at today's market cap we're trading for less than the value of the infrastructure and you're getting our interest in Dumont for free and so, there's been very few large multi-million-ounce deposits discovered in low risk jurisdictions over the last few years. You have a bunch of Aussie mid tiers who have well valued paper who have fully cashed up and who are looking to maintain their production and resource profiles. So, I think as we continue to show what Beta Hunt’s really capable of, I'll expect to hear some knocks on the door sooner than later. »
Mike Coyle: « I would be surprised if nobody did come knocking to be quite honest with you. »
Mark Selby: « Yeah I know when you see that the Aussie companies are having to travel to Canada. You've seen some recent transactions. So, they're obviously looking to continue to grow and reality is there's just not so many options in low risk jurisdictions. »
Mike Coyle: « The price of gold, I mean it's been going up. You're forecasting nickel to have a high demand given the supply that's out there right now. What do you see for the gold market moving forward? »
Mark Selby: « Yeah, I mean gold right now is over 2,000 $ AUD. Those are all-time highs and so, it's tremendous for us to have that kind of gold price environment and again, underscores the fact that getting that mill when we did was excellent timing because there are a lot of smaller open pits all throughout the Kalgoorlie area and at these kinds of prices it makes a lot of those economics. So, over the next three to six months, we expect to see some more supply coming to the market and this time we're on the other side of the fence where we have the capacity and can look to figure out what's the maximum way to use our mill capacity to create value for our shareholders. »
Mike Coyle: « So, it's perfect because my last question I wanted to close out with was how does Higginsville mill working out for you and what are you seeing? Is it working out, you just poured your first dor bar of gold? That must have been pretty exciting? »
Mark Selby: « Yeah, it was I mean to get the first sort of block of Beta Hunt ore through the mill was fantastic and […] based on the amount of gold came out quite happy with the way it performed and we're doing the final toll run now for third-party and then after that, we'll be hitting the Beta Hunt ore hard through July and August as again, we had kept the ore to process through our own facility as opposed to paying the third-party tolling charges that we had before. So, it's very exciting to get there. The team on the ground’s done a good job with the integration. I think the next couple of quarters here are gonna be pretty exciting. »
Mike Coyle: « So, there's not going to be any more third-party milling? Like you're just gonna focus 100% on Baloo and Beta Hunt at this point? »
Mark Selby: « Yeah that's correct. »
Mike Coyle: « Perfect, all right well thank you so much Mark it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you again and hopefully we can do this again soon. »
Mark Selby: « Yeah, sounds great thanks Mike. »