Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson Outlines Details of 2018 Winter Diamond Drilling Program at Rajapalot, Following up on Recent Spectacularly High-Grade Gold Discoveries in Outcrop

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is CEO of Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you sir?

Michael Hudson: As always, top of the world. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Well listen, thank you for your time today. You've had some recent pieces of news that are very, very important. The first is that you closed the brokered financing of $5.3 million, so you are now fully funded for this very exciting 2017/2018 winter diamond drilling program in Finland at one of the most exciting targets I've seen in a while. So I'd love for you to fill in the details and tell us where things are today.

Michael Hudson: Well, we're very thankful for all the supporters and the team that pulled that financing together. So, firstly, a public thanks to everyone involved, and we're rewarding people, at least in the first instance, by wasting no time in getting rigs on the ground.

So, as you said, we closed $5.3 million, we've got north of $8 million in the bank, we've got a $5 to $6 million dollar, 15 kilometer drill program planned this winter. Winter's just starting now so we've mobilized a rig yesterday, started drilling today, news just went out on the East Rompas target in the first instance. And that's where we've made some spectacularly high-grade gold discoveries in outcrop, not float, in outcrop up to thousands of grams, spot discovers at the moment. There’s 99% cover, so it is a drill exercise. But these discoveries of thousands of grams of gold extend over 750 meters, and we've got 2,000 meters planned there between now and mid-January.

And then, the rig will move to the northern Rajapalot area, an area we called Hirvimaa and start drilling there. Then we'll bring more rigs in by mid to late January when the conditions for Rajapalot proper where we did most of the drilling last year and where most of our more advanced discoveries exist, and we'll move up to five rigs, drilling right through to April. This is a big, systematic, rigorous drill program ahead of us over the next five months.

Gerardo Del Real: I'd like to site a few of the numbers for that East Rompas target. Some of these numbers are just astronomical. It's 2,375 grams per tonne gold. Another sample returned 1,284 grams per tonne gold. Another one was 642 grams per tonne gold. And 216 grams per tonne gold. And so, when you say high grade I want to make sure that we provide the proper context for people that may be new to the story.

Michael Hudson: Thank you for doing so, Gerardo. It is quite spectacular, as I've said to you as we've talked before. It's very rare to find gold in outcrop these days, very rare to find gold in outcrop where you have 99% thin glacial till cover that covers all our project. So we have very little outcrop on our project. And then it's very rare to find these grades of gold in outcrop. It really just doesn't happen.

And then the corollary is that most significant gold camps in the world have been found through bonanza style discoveries at surface. Now, of course we've got a way to go to demonstrate that, but the scale of this system is large, the grades are great, we've got coherency around drilling that when we put our first big drill program in last year. So, it's coming together and I should just state that East Rompas is 8 kilometers away from Rajapalot, so the system is over 10 by 10 kilometers, 100 square kilometers. So, it's a big area also.

Gerardo Del Real: Now, you do something that I really like, I think it's an effective use of shareholder money. Not only are you doing diamond drilling, but you're also doing base-of-till drilling to test the 20 kilometer strike, if I'm not mistaken, of East Rompas. Can you explain that type of drilling and why you use that to compliment the diamond drilling?

Michael Hudson: In industry we use lots of varying types of drilling, cheaper drilling to give us reconnaissance values, and then diamond drilling is the ultimate truth machine that we use, and which gives us core of rock that we can see that's in situ.

Now, I just mentioned that 99% of our area has this glacial till or soil cover. So the glaciers came through 10,000 years ago and when they melted they left a few meters of bouldery rock and silts and sand on top of the bedrock. To get through that and sample that consistently we used a relatively cheaper tool called a base-of-till drill rig, which gives us just the last sample at the base of the till, which is the least transported part of the glacier profile, and some bedrock information. And then, if we get a little hit in that then we follow it up with diamond drilling. So it's a way to de-risk the project.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Mike, anything else that you'd like to add before I let you go? I want to wish you a great holiday and Merry Christmas, a wonderful New Years, I anticipate that 2018 is going to be an exciting one for Mawson and for shareholders.

Michael Hudson: We've got a lot of news flow. And I wish you and your listeners all the same, Gerardo, a very happy Christmas and a safe time with family. But just the only last point is at Rajapalot we're putting 50% of our drill budget into more grid-style drilling with the aim to try and define resources. So that's where the program's shifting to a little bit this year, or at least half of it, to defining more consistency around the known zones. And whether we are in a position to quote a resource at the end of this program or not will depend on the consistency and how fortunate we've been with the drilling.

The other half is exploring the 95% of the target horizon that has been untested. And we just don't know where the best parts of that system lie at, so we can't get too focused too early, but we've got to give it some focus. So that's the breakdown.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I know as a true professional, Mike, you won't comment too much, but I know in the past you've had mid-tiers and majors that have been on the property that have shown significant interest because of the scale and the grades that the system has demonstrated thus far. And so, without getting too specific, can you answer whether or not your phones are still ringing?

Michael Hudson: It's the job of all the majors and mid-tiers to be on top of all the key gold discoveries around the world, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I commend them for doing a very thorough job with Mawson Resources. Mr. Michael Hudson, thank you very much for your time.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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