Gold Summary (TSX-V:*MKTGOLD)
Monday July 26 2021 - Market Summary
by Stockwatch Business Reporter
New York spot gold fell $4.70 Monday, closing at $1,797.50. The TSX Venture Exchange added 3.69 points to 906.25 while the TSX gold index rose 3.01 points to 296.51. Most Canadian gold miners moved higher today. The gains were generally limited, although Ero Copper Corp. (ERO), a Brazilian gold and copper producer, added 84 cents to $24.79 on 264,000 shares. Iamgold Corp. (IMG) tagged along with a 14-cent gain to $3.27 on 2.74 million shares. New Found Gold Corp. (NFG), not yet a miner but looking much like it could become one, lost 19 cents to $9.83 on 151,000 shares.
Terry Hartbort's Talisker Resources Ltd. (TSK) lost one-half cent to 29 cents on 314,000 shares on word that it has a deal to acquire all the shares of Kenneth Holmes's New Carolin Gold Corp. (LAD) and its Ladner gold project in south-central British Columbia. To acquire New Carolin, Talisker will issue nearly 0.32 of a Talisker share for each New Carolin share, which implies a price of 9.5 centsper New Carolin share. Accordingly, investors responded with a bit more enthusiasm on the New Carolin side, sending that stock up one cent to eight cents on 3.88 million shares.
Mr. Harbort, Talisker's president and chief executive officer, says that the arrangement "is directly in line with Talisker's strategy to consolidate quality mineral assets in south-central British Columbia" -- something to complement the company's nearby Bralorne gold project in other words. Mr. Harbortgushes enthusiastically about Ladner, which he says comes with a compliant resource estimate and a district-size land package -- a small deposit on a large block of moose pasture -- adding that he and his crew "expect this purchase to represent another transformational transaction for Talisker."
Nearly all the Ladner resource resides near the old Carolin mine, where a six-year-old estimate listed 12.1 million tonnes inferred at 1.53 grams of gold per tonne, just over 600,000 ounces. Nearly 80,000 more ounces lie within the 3.58 million tonnes averaging 0.69 gram of gold per tonne sitting in the McMaster zone, while 5,000 ounces are present in a tailings deposit at the old mine.
Mr. Harbort and Talisker have higher hopes, if not expectations, based on drilling by New Carolin a few years ago. That work produced assays of up to 1.39 grams of gold per tonne over 93 metres, a hit that included a seven-metre interval averaging 5.75 grams per tonne. Mr. Harbort also points to earlier drilling that encountered 17.1 grams of gold per tonne over 10 metres and 10.9 grams per tonne over 21.4 metres, not to mention an enticing 62-metre zone that averaged nearly five grams per tonne.
Mr. Holmes, president and CEO of New Carolin, lauded Talisker's "financial strength and technical expertise" as the key to unlocking "what we have always believed to be the extraordinary value" of the Ladner project, but the crux of his delight centred on the "tremendous added benefit" -- the (not so tremendous) premium offered above New Carolin's shoestring share price -- and the exposure to an expanded gold project that his shareholders will glean by becoming Talisker shareholders.
Layton Croft's Pancontinental Resources Corp. (PUC) lost two cents to 14.5 cents on 411,000 shares on word that it has drilled a 106.5-metre interval averaging 1.07 grams of gold per tonne and 0.26 per cent copper at its Brewer project in South Carolina. The assays are from three new holes; the two other tests also produced gold, but over narrower intervals. One yielded comparable grades over 16 metres, while the other managed 2.22 grams of gold per tonne and 0.07 per cent copper over 11.9 metres.
Mr. Croft, president and CEO, says that the new results prove that gold-copper mineralization extends to the south and southeast of the discovery holes. The long new hit was drilled 50 metres south of the hole drilled late last year and assayed in April, which produced 0.91 gram of gold per tonne and 0.17 per cent copper. It is also 160 metres south of a hole, assayed in April as well, which delivered 1.24 grams of gold per tonne and 0.27 per cent copper over a hefty 181.6 metres. (The other two new holes were drilled a further 50 metres south and southeast of the discovery holes.)
Mr. Croft and his crew are sufficiently enthused that Pancontinental is adding a second drill to its program. He and his crew tout Brewer as the "premier gold-copper target in the eastern United States" and perhaps it is, if one remembers that Haile, the Oceanagold Corp. (OGC: $2.27) project, is a mine, not just a target, and it produces just gold, not copper.
Brewer was a mine as well. From 1987 to 1995 it produced 178,000 ounces of oxide gold from open pits dug to depths of 50 metres. The owner at the time, Kennecott Minerals, recognized that deeper sulphide ore was present and had a worthwhile copper content, but its oxide heap leaching facility was unable to process that rock.