(Image via Ready Set Gold. Click to enlarge.)
Canada is the 3rd most attractive region in the world for mining investment. Ontario is the 2nd most attractive province for mining investment in Canada. Ready Set Gold should be the 1st company on your radar.
Many major, tier-one gold mining companies operate mines in Ontario due to its significant gold endowment as highlighted by these major camps with over 150 million ounces of gold:
- Hemlo-Schrieber Greenstone Belt (21M oz)
- Red Lake Mining Camp (22M oz)
- Timmins Mining Camp (+70M oz)
- Kirkland Lake Camp (41.5M oz)
Ready Set Gold (CSE: RDY) has just started working towards securing a place amongst the local mining titans in Ontario’s Hemlo – Schreiber Greenstone Belt.
Just listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, the company is already well positioned to advance to this goal. The Company’s 100% owned flagship Northshore Project already boasts an historic estimate of Indicated resource of 391,000 oz. & Inferred resource of 824,000 oz gold coming out of the gate and it is here, where RDY will move swiftly to take advantage of exciting near-term opportunities and a rising bull market.
The Northshore Project, one of the oldest gold discoveries in Ontario, has been underexplored for the better part of a decade and now it is time to build upon it with new eyes, modern technologies and aggressive exploration. Infrastructure surrounds the project which is one of the key aspects to developing potentially Ontario’s next mine. Another key aspect to the project's location is the climate, the location allows for exploration work nearly throughout the entire calendar year.
Bringing to the market a project with such a large resource is one thing but RDY has multiple reasons why investors should spend some due diligence time on them. They have two other projects in very exciting greenstone gold camps nearby. The first is the Hemlo Eastern Flanks Property, which is still in the early stages of its exploration and surrounds Barrick Gold’s new exploration project in the Hemlo Gold camp. It is about 27km from the world renowned Hemlo gold mine and another aggressive junior next to this project just launched a 10,000m drill program.
The second early-stage project is the Emmons Peak project approximately 25km from Treasury Metals’ Goliath-Goldlund development, it is a grass roots exploration stage greenstone project in which the Company has an option to acquire 100% and is also on the same greenstone belt of several multi-million ounce deposits.
In the latest development, the
Company announced on Friday February 12th, 2021 that their Phase 1 Drilling Program is approaching 50% completion, and is progressing as planned. Core logging and sampling is underway with samples from five holes sent to SGS Laboratories in Sudbury for analysis.
It is an exciting time for the Company and Stockhouse Editorial caught up with Ready Set Gold’s Chief Executive Officer, Christian Scovenna to find out more ….
- Thank you for joining us. Let us begin with the Northshore project. How did the Company manage to acquire 100% ownership of such a valuable project, where it has been fractionally owned for a decade?
Firstly, thank you for having us. We are very excited to be moving the Northshore project forward. It is a fairly rare occasion that a newly listed company can bring to market such a sizable historic estimate resource with remarkable exploration upside.
You did your homework and are correct, the project had fractured ownership and was held by two companies since 2011 which ultimately made financing difficult. One of the companies was Balmoral Resources which was acquired by Wallbridge Mining (TSX: WM) in March of last year. Through our established industry relationships we knew that Wallbridge’s focus would be on their exciting Fenelon Gold camp and we were right as they recently announced a 170,000 metre drilling program there. As a result of friendly negotiations, we were able to come to favourable terms with both the and the other holders.
- There appears to be a lot of growth opportunity with the project, what are some of its key aspects that investors should know about?
Previous operators focused mostly on a single showing on the project called the Afric Zone. Rightfully so, as with about 150 diamond drill holes they managed to put together the now historic estimate resource. The gold mineralization at Afric is near surface and open in several directions and at depth which on its own makes it very attractive to our team.
On top of that, through our own due diligence evaluation of the historic data and through conducting field studies in 2020 we are excited about the tremendous opportunities in not only deposit expansion opportunities at Afric but also in the largely undrilled and possibly misunderstood series of parallel high-grade quartz veins. These veins are located north of the deposit and run in an east to west direction. One such mapped vein, has a shut-in historic mine approximately 500m north of Afric and sampling around here resulted in grab sample values as high as 301 grams per tonne gold! As I said, this northern area has seen almost zero attention in decades and begs for modern exploration.
- Can you provide a timeline for exploration activity and the extent of any drill program planned?
Ready Set Gold has plans to be very aggressive in its approach to Northshore as well as its other projects. We are currently well advanced into our initial 3,000 metre drilling campaign at Northshore.
This first program is intended to teach us more about the mineralization controls of the known Afric Zone. It will also explore some of the already mapped high-grade veins to the north of the known deposit. These expansion areas of the property include multiple mineralized veins outcropping on surface that in 2020's field exploration program were identified with grades up to 329 grams per ton gold.
We are anticipating on receiving the first batch of drill assay results this month and will be quickly turning the information around for investors. We also don’t intend to take very long in announcing a Phase 2 drill program subsequent to completion of this first one.
- The Hemlo-Schreiber Greenstone Belt is world-class, with about 21 million oz. of gold mined just at the Hemlo Mine, can you expand a bit on this well-endowed area?
This Greenstone belt is one of many Archean greenstone belts in the Superior Province that have been, and are, a major source of gold and base metals with gold occurring as higher-grade lode and larger tonnage deposits. Other examples of greenstone hosted gold include the Timmins, Kirkland Lake, and Val-d’Or districts in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt and the Red Lake deposits. Combined, these greenstone hosted gold districts have produced in excess of 150 million ounces of gold!
- What makes Ready Set Gold stand apart from other mining companies in Ontario?
We have brought together a strong & serial successful management, executive board and technical team. We believe in our strategy on reaching our goals and milestones. Our current portfolio of projects gives shareholders an excellent mix of near-term production possibilities through to early discovery potential. The Northshore Gold Project has one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in Ontario and is open for potential scalable expansion. Our share structure is very tight with less than 45% of the total outstanding being available in the open market..
- Let us highlight members of the Company’s leadership & technical team. Let us start with you. Can you give us some detail on your background and how you came to the Company?
Gladly. I have worked in the capital markets on nearly every executive level as well as on the corporate advisory position for thirteen years. Although, I have had diverse experiences in several industries, I can truly say that the junior mining sector is the most exciting and potentially rewarding to be a part of. The pursuit of discovery to expansion to potential cash flow is what gets us very excited. We are fortunate to have all three cycles of the sector in our portfolio of projects already.
Our Board of Directors & Qualified Person are an excellent mixture of each aspect of profession within our sector that a company needs in order to be very successful for its shareholders. We are honoured to include every member of our team.
- Your other two projects are positioned among some well-known deposit areas. Can you give investors some information on their potential? Can you highlight some of the activity happening around them?
We think that our two peripheral projects could be excellent stand-alone early exploration projects. The Hemlo Eastern Flanks is very close to Barrick’s claim border and possibly along strike from the Hemlo Mine itself. The ground was prospected many years ago with strong interest. The area has heated up recently with just about all of the known Greenstone trend being staked in this area. In December 2020 Barrick completed a deal with our next-door neighbor Metalcorp where Barrick forwarded $3 million cash up front and made a work commitment of $5.2 million within three years to earn 85% of their ground.
Also our neighbour Hemlo Explorers just commenced their first drilling program of a minimum of 10,000 metres in approximately 20 drill holes. This type of activity will bring a lot more attention to this area and we will announce our own exploration plan for the project in the near future.
Our third property is called Emmon’s Peak and it sits about 30km’s south of Dryden Ontario. The project is located about 26km’s southwest of the Goliath & Goldlund Mines run by Treasury Metals and on the Greenstone trend of New Gold’s Rainy River production mine. We feel there is strong potential to find high-grade deposits in and around our project. A sample taken on the project in the 1980’s returned an extraordinary value as high as 14,175 g/t gold! We expect that with modern science we can find a lot of high grade gold in the area.
8. Finally – what is your take on the commodity market outlook for 2021?
We expect the year to be strong for gold and silver. The macro picture remains compelling for people to own physical precious metals as a hedge. Gold has been the global currency for at least 4,000 years and stores value much better than a fiat currency.
9. Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us, anything further to add?
We intend to stay in close communication with our shareholders and other interested parties going forward. We have brought to market a compelling basket of projects with significant captured value and exploration upside. Our team has a plan in place and is excited to have the opportunity to unlock the value. Thanks for your time.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Ready Set Gold is a client of Stockhouse Publishing.