Our company today is dedicated to being a responsible community partner. Xali Gold plans to advance its gold and silver assets internally and with industry partners. El Oro is the company’s flagship asset, home to a well-known prolific high-grade gold-silver epithermal vein system in Mexico.
The Market Herald recently caught up with CEO, Joanne Freeze.
TMH: It has been a while since we touched base with you. Can you give investors at home a quick background on the company?
JF: Xali Gold’s focus is exploration. We are fundamentally made up of explorers. I started a company several years ago and we split that one into a copper company and a gold company. Xali Gold’s been public since 2010 and we started with our big focus: El Oro which produced 8-million-ounce gold equivalent around the turn of the century and was the largest gold mine in North America at that time. Then we ventured into some cash flow opportunities while exploration was really hard to fund. We have one [cash-flow opportunity] in tailings at the El Oro project, that came out of one of the mines there, and then we also went to Western Mexico, and we have an interest in a plant there. Then we’ve done a profit-sharing deal with a Mexican mining group that have their own small mines and we’ll put our plant back in action and we’ll profit share.
TMH: I know the company signed a profit-sharing agreement for the SDA Plant, are there any updates around this?
JF: I’m just getting updates verbally, I need to confirm certain things before we can put out any news releases but yes, they are advancing with both coming up with resources, and knowing what needs to be done to the plant to get it into operation. They’re developing three or four small mines, using that mineral to bring to our mine, process it, sell it, and then make money to expand things and really get our plant up and running to full capacity. They’ve been at the plant a couple of times, and they know it has to be done and they’ve told me that within a couple of weeks, they expect to be getting it operational to some extent. I would call it pilot tests, that sort of thing.
In addition to that, we have an exploration agreement that we’ve agreed to go into with them. They have both exploration opportunities at their current small mines, but they also are finding more opportunities every day and have come up with a couple of very exciting ones, so we’re in discussions on that as well.
TMH: In January, Xali Gold agreed to extend its production earn-in option agreement with Sun River Gold for the Tailings Project in El Oro. Has there been any advances around this since then?
JF: We’re still waiting for permits but certainly they’re advancing with investors, and just understanding their processing opportunities. Of course, the price of gold is a good thing too because it’s been on the rise and of course when you see gold at $2000, that means much better profits. It’s coming along. It’s been difficult for investors and ourselves waiting for that but Sun River Gold has been increasing their payments to us and its advanced royalty payments or NPI payments, so that really helps us just keep the lights on, but it’s very encouraging.
TMH: What can investors look forward to in the coming quarters?
JF: Getting cash flow going through the tailings, through the SDA plant and through exploration in western Mexico with our partners at the SDA plant. Also, recently we’ve been seeing more activity in Peru. We still own a couple of small claims in Peru in some key areas where we thought had a lot of gold and silver potential. The co-founder of the company is Peruvian, and I lived in Peru, and I do a lot of other work in Peru. We have a lot of knowledge base in Peru, and we see some majors poking their nose around and getting increased activity around some of our claims. We’re hoping that could mean something for exploration potential on some of our properties.
TMH: Is there anything else you would like to touch on before we part ways?
JF: Just to remind people that I know we’ve been quiet, but we are busy in the background, and we don’t put news releases out unless we can substantiate everything. There is a lot going on with all these different activities in two different countries and we do expect to have some solid news coming out very soon.
Again, we’ve been speaking with Xali Gold Corp. CEO Joanne Freeze.
Head over to xaligold.com for all the ins and outs of the company. You can also find them on the TSXV under the ticker symbol ‘XGC’.
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