Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

New Placer Dome Gold (TSX-V: NGLD)(OTC: NPDCF) CEO Max Sali On Hitting High-Grade at Western Flank Zone & Upcoming Oxide Assays

March 24, 2021

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO & founder of New Placer Dome Gold — Mr. Max Sali. Max, how are you this morning?

Max Sali: Gerardo, I'm in the best mood I've been this entire year!

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I suspect some of that has to do with the fact that you had more results from Kinsley Mountain. Let me read the numbers. The headline number reads:

New Placer Dome Gold drills 24.1 grams per tonne gold over 4.6 meters at the Kinsley Mountain Gold Project in Nevada. 

That was within an intercept of 15.1 grams per tonne gold over 7.6 meters. Of course, this is from the Western Flank Zone. These are step-outs. I'll let you provide the context there.

Max Sali: Here's the significance of this hole. We drilled a number of holes. This hole was drilled northwest of the current resource. And the significance of this hole is the high-grade is much shallower than the average depth of the resource. This is actually the highest grade drill interval from the top of the Secret Canyon shale zone ever drilled at the Kinsley Mountain Gold Project. And it's among the top 40 holes out of 1,400 holes ever drilled at Kinsley. 

The nice thing too, to remind people, is this sulfide floats a very high-grade concentration. Most sulfide in Nevada; you see the word “sulfide” — you can't mine it. This is not the case with the Secret Canyon sulfide. It floats, it works, and it's very amicable for something like a Carlin autoclave or a roaster.

Here's what we've done… is we've drilled outside a step-out about 35 meters outside of the current resource to the northwest. We hit this gold, a significant number. And now that warrants immediate follow up to drill around that area… keep doing step-outs because that high-grade – much shallower than the average grade of the resource – is where you are going to add ounces very quickly. And because it becomes shallower, an open pit concept does become much easier. 

There's actually already an economic model for open pit. But this just solidifies that. We are excited. We had a number of misses as you're going to have in exploration, period. Kinsley's a big asset. It's a deeper asset. So you're going to miss on some holes. But when you hit, you get rewarded. And 24 grams gold in Nevada is significant by any standard. It's significant anywhere in the world.

Gerardo Del Real: It looks to me – from looking at the map and the location of the holes – that where you missed was to the north. The west and the east seem wide open to me. Is that accurate?

Max Sali: The northwest is open. We drilled some more holes to the north. But again, in this year's program, we were pretty much drilling blind… drilling all over the place. Because of the delay at the lab, we don't know where we were hitting because we weren't getting assays back until significantly after the whole program was completed. 

Just to give you an idea, Gerardo, we sent these holes to the lab November 9th and additional holes that will be out soon, November 23rd. And we did not get that data back until last week. That is a 5-month delay! It's unprecedented. It's never been heard of before. But when you think about things, if we had put out these numbers two months ago — no one would have cared. 

We've seen that gold has hit the bottom, and it's coming back up. And I think that now is a better time. Honestly, I've personally been very happy with my insider purchases. Obviously, I'm blacked out now. But I've had the ability to buy hundreds of thousands of shares at C$0.20 and I think I filled an order at C$0.16 a few weeks ago. And now we're being rewarded at Kinsley.

Like I said, if you're the CEO, you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. I believed in this asset… a number of people… I know you believed in this asset… and now Kinsley's showing us what it can do. To me, that's an elephant we hit in Nevada.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned in the release that you expect additional RC drill hole results for Kinsley from the main pit north shallow oxide target, imminently. That sounds like assay's are starting to come in, and we'll get some numbers from there soon. 

And, frankly, that's a target I'm excited about because, again, it's a past producing asset. We know what the metallurgy looks like there. We know that, in Nevada, it doesn't take very much to have good economic grades of gold if you latch onto something. I believe that target is as rich, frankly, as the Western Flank target.

Max Sali: Yes, we will have, like I said, imminently, we are getting data in right now…  we're starting to build a press release… so I'd probably say within the next week or so. But yes, we drilled a number of holes outside of the historical production pit. 

Kinsley – between 1995 and 1999 – produced 140,000 ounces to an ROM heap leach. Anything we hit outside of this historical pit of oxide, technically, it means that the pit is open and it's amicable to heap leach because that ore is just not going to change once you go over that little hill, right? 

We could expand the pit, which potentially means that you could start up a heap leach process again because of the grade. We're very excited about those holes. And we're, just in general, we have, following all of these holes, we still have over 20 holes we're waiting for. So a lot of firepower left to go. And again, if we can continue to hit numbers like this, Gerardo — it's going to be a very good summer for New Placer Dome.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned that the results, thus far, warrant and merit an aggressive drill program; a new aggressive drill program. I imagine that the drill bit will be turning again once you get all of the data and the holes in?

Max Sali: That would be correct. It's hard to say when the rest of the holes will arrive just because we've seen this massive delay. But what we can do now is – now that we know where we're hitting and where we're missing – is we can create a program around this particular hole. You step out around this particular hole. And if we have success over at the historical pit, we can plan a program around that. 

And those two would be big enough to warrant a full summer’s exploration program, for sure. Also, we have a bunch of new targets, which anything we hit would be a new discovery. If any of those holes come back and are successful over the next, let's say, 4 to 6 weeks, we could also plan a drill program around those immediately to follow up, yes.

Gerardo Del Real: Max, I'm excited to visit the property next month; I'm looking forward to that. I want to thank you for your time, and it sounds like you and I will be chatting pretty soon.

Max Sali: Yes, sir… thank you, Gerardo, for your time — appreciate it!

Gerardo Del Real: Alright, thanks again, Max.