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The Green Metals Revolution is here and now. And forward-thinking exploration companies are looking for the green…both literally and figuratively.
New Age Metals Inc. (
TSX-V.NAM,
OTCQB: NMTLF,
Forum) is a ‘green’ metals, mineral exploration, and development company. The company has two divisions – each engaged in the process of acquiring, exploring, and developing Platinum Group Metals and lithium projects. Geographically, New Age Metals operates in Canada and the U-S, with projects including the River Valley PGM Project near Sudbury Ontario, its Genesis PGM-Copper-Nickel Project in Alaska, and seven separate lithium projects in Southeast Manitoba.
In this highly informative video podcast, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson was joined by company Chairman, CEO & Director, Harry Barr, to discuss the launching of NAM’s two important projects this spring, project backing from renowned billionaire and mining investment guru Eric Sprott, and all things New Age Metals.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: To start off with, Harry, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
HB: Well, I've been in the business since my mid-twenties in a long time now, basically every company I've started on the, what used to be the venture exchange or the Vancouver exchange is still running today and over the years, some of the people that worked for me for many years run some of the other ones and basically New Age Metals is our main focus these days. And I'm happy to say that I work with a veteran group of directors and geologists who are geologists and engineers and the same with our more immediate day-to-day consultants. So we've got I think everybody's over 50 and they've been in this industry a long time except for Cody Hunt who's a young fellow just got out of Queens a couple of years ago in engineering. So he's the younger man in the group and everyone else is a veteran.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your N-A-M shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19?
HB: Well we were, I guess, very fortunate that the COVID obviously brought a lot of new rules and we follow them very closely. But it hasn't really slowed us down and either at least in Canada, a little tougher last year in Alaska, but we didn't do any work on the project at that time. We'd planned to do some this year, but I know things have gone along very well and nothing's really slowed us down too much.
SH: The company has launched two important projects this spring – magnetic survey work for lithium and rare elements in Manitoba along with a prefeasibility study on the Ontario palladium project. Can you expand on these projects for our investor audience?
HB: Yeah, the River Valley, our flagship property, it's a multi-million-ounce district scale asset. One of the largest undeveloped platinum group metal deposits in North America. We had only started in two 19 and did the first economic study, a PEA. It was done and it was successful and was economic at the time, but it was done in only $1,200 ounce palladium. As you know, today where we've been looking for a long time closer to about 25, $2,600 an ounce US. So and the other metals that the project has, which are platinum would be second, gold, there's copper, nickel and cobalt and some rhodium that we're doing testing on. I'll tell you more about it later, but all of these metals have increased in value. Rhodium hit as high as $30,000 ounce this year. So, this round of economics should be much more different than the first round in two 19.
And we've just signed up with four engineering companies and we'll do a metallurgical study with another group and announced that this past Monday, it's about a $2.7 million program. It's a pre-feasibility study and it will be done about the end of the first quarter of next year, if not before. So there'll be quite a few different groups involved in it. And we will be making announcements as the year goes on, but it's a very big study for us and we're really excited to get going on it. Along with that, we will do some other work too, that I can probably tell you about coming up.
SH: Sounds great. You recently announced you’ll be commencing exploration drilling of up to five-thousand metres at the River Valley Project in Ontario. This may be news to many investors. Can you unpack some of the details here?
HB: We’ve got 16 kilometers of mineralization, Dave, and only about 60% of it in the original contact is drilled. So about 40% of it remains open. And then in two 17 and 18, we did a new round of geophysics, as you know, geophysics change every couple of years, almost like computers do. And the last time geophysics were done on this property, it was about 17, 18 years ago. So in the Northern portion of the property, we did about three kilometers of geophysics and we've come up with at least nine drill targets. One of them we drilled, and we hit on already the other eight or so have not been drilled. So as the year goes on and we get, we have to do a couple of rounds of drilling before this drilling. Part of it will be metallurgical drilling and then geo-technical drilling on each one of the pits we'll do the geotechnical drilling. Then later this fall into the next winter, we will start the 5,000-meter program on those targets in the northern portion of the property that haven't been drilled. One thing I’d like to say, there's another 12 kilometers that we'd like to do the geophysics on this property again. And sometime in the next year or two, we hope to do that too. And that should generate a lot more targets.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect at your various Manitoba, Ontario, and Alaska projects to meet the growing global demand for PGMS and lithium?
HB: Well, we'll talk about Manitoba because I haven't said much about it, but as you mentioned, we have seven projects out there. We're just finishing a round of geophysics with a drone on three of the seven projects. And if we like what we see there Dave, we're going to probably follow up and do all of the geophysics. We're able to get a nice grant, a non-refundable grant from the Manitoba government to do part of this. And we also have two of the projects basically, ready to drill, and we will be doing drilling on at least one or two of them before the year's over. We're fully funded for that. And once we get the results from the geophysics, we'll get people out in the field and do a lot more surface work on those projects. In Alaska we're getting quotes right now a round of geophysics and we hope to get back in the field and do some work there. That's a project we'd like to joint venture in the next year or two. So our holding costs are quite small under 40,000 a year. And we'll do another round of geophysics there and some surface sampling. And we've outlined an area on surface over about 2,000 meters that have a couple of grams of PGMs, both platinum and palladium on surface in areas and up to 1% of copper and nickel.
SH: Both retail and institutional investors take notice when a project gets backing from renowned billionaire and mining investment guru Eric Sprott. Can you tell us some more about the Sprott private placement and the raise?
HB: Well, we were happy to have Mr. Sprott come into last year’s financing, and at the time, he wanted to take more, but we were basically at the tail end of the financing. So we put about $700,000 in this year when we announced the financing, he initially started with a million dollars and we were trying to increase that. It's a funny time in the industry. It's a good time, basically, because we were literally turned down millions of dollars of people's money this year. Having only announced just under 5 million, then we bumped it up to 5.250. And then after that, Mr. Sprott phoned and said, he'd like to put $5 million more in. So we've taken just about $3 million of that. And we're out now getting 50.1% of the shareholders vote to allow the last $2 million to come in. He's at 19.9%. The full amount of the financing would put him at about 26% that's without his warrants. So he's a very strategic partner in a very large or the largest shareholder of the company. Yeah. He has an excellent name and people follow him very closely.
SH: I have to mention your stock has had a very nice bump since late last June…nearly quadrupling in value since then. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s still a good value buy right now?
HB: Well, first of all, our market cap is only still about $35 million and we have about eight and a half million cash with a couple more million coming in. So almost a third of it is cash. In the last year, year and a half, the price of palladium is as I think, put a real good focus on our company. I said a couple of years ago, people couldn't spell palladium or, or know what it was used for. And I think we've got a lot more recognition in the last year on that, but as you know, the lithium stocks have done very well this year, too. And for the first time in four or five years too. And it's been a tough go for that. So I think we're getting recognized as a company that’s unique in the sense that it has two green metals, platinum group metals and the lithium and people are coming in for both of those reasons. You know, and I think it looks to me like it's the start of another boom in the junior mining industry and mining in general and prices of metals are exceptional. And obviously we have this terrible COVID problem going around the world. But even at that, things seemed to be going very well in the industry for the first time in a few years. So I think all of that together is part of the reason we’ve moved up.
SH: Can you discuss the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond, and what retail, institutional and private equity investors should be looking out for?
HB: Well, for our River Valley project, I'm getting the pre-feasibility study done, we'll then move us on to the feasibility study. And I think at that time that's going to unlock a lot of value. I mean, we have several million ounces in different categories in the property and a lot more upside. Every million ounces today is a couple of billion dollars in the ground in terms of gross metal. So it's a project that I still think is very, very undervalued in terms of where our price is today. The lithium itself is, is exciting. I think it's a great place to be in the industry for the next unforeseen future in terms of the demand for lithium. So I think there'll be a lot of news coming out. We're just starting to drill some of those projects over time. We hope to bring in a partner on the lithium division and Alaska and possibly for River Valley. So funded for the next year-and-a-half or more, and a lot of news coming out from all of the different projects.
SH: And finally, Harry, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
HB: No, I think your questions were very good. We've got a great website. So I definitely would ask people to come and take a look at that. If they have any more questions, they can contact the office, but I like to say, and obviously I'm biased as a CEO. If you're looking at making several investments in the junior mining industry, this company should be one of them.
For regular updates, visit
newagemetals.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.