Categories: Mining Stocks
Topics: Copper Stocks

GreenLight Metals (TSX-V: GRL)(OTC: GRLMF) CEO Matt Filgate on Drilling for High-Grade Copper, Gold, and Tellurium at Flagship Bend VMS Project, Wisconsin

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of GreenLight Metals Inc. (TSX-V: GRL)(OTC: GRLMF)  — Mr. Matt Filgate. Matt, it's great to have you on. How are you today, sir?

Matt Filgate: I'm doing great, Gerardo, thanks. I appreciate you taking some time to chat.

Gerardo Del Real: Let me start by being completely transparent, as I always am. I’m very biased on GreenLight. I am a shareholder and have been since the company was private, and I haven't sold a single share. Despite the company having some incredible properties in Wisconsin — and me being a Cubs fan — I'm going to be a long-term and supportive shareholder.

As I said to you off-air, I don’t think the market appreciates the first-mover advantage you have in this part of the country. I want to start there before we get into your background.

Can you provide an overview of how you were able to put this portfolio of properties together when no one was looking — and why no one was looking? Then let’s talk about why I think we’re going to do phenomenally well with GreenLight.

Matt Filgate: Yes, and for context and for the viewers, Wisconsin is a very interesting political landscape. We call it a purple state, meaning it flips between Democratic and Republican leadership. 

Historically, the state has seen periods of intense exploration. In the '70s and '80s, there were lots of companies exploring. Then in the '90s, Rio Tinto put the Flambeau Mine into production, which was a very successful mine.

But in 1997, unfortunately, a mining moratorium was implemented in the state. That was a reaction to the Crandon deposit — a big discovery made by BHP — which went through all of the trials and tribulations of permitting and community engagement. It actually got permitted, but then ended up in a major contested case hearing.

The ultimate outcome was that the state just wasn’t ready for this type of industry. They implemented a moratorium — more of a “prove-it-first” concept. They wanted mining companies to have a strong environmental track record before they’d allow them to operate. That essentially stalled or stopped all mining and mineral exploration in Wisconsin.

So to answer your question — how did we end up with all of these incredible prospects and assets in Wisconsin? Well, the company Aquila Resources — which was our predecessor — had a lot to do with that.

Gerardo Del Real: Yes.

Matt Filgate: Aquila, which was ultimately acquired by Gold Resource Corp., began acquiring these assets around 2008 or 2009. They held them in the background as they discovered the Back Forty Project, which sits in the same geological terrain but about four miles on the Michigan side of the border.

They did a little bit of work in 2011 and 2012. They drilled our Reef Project — that’s our gold project — and they drilled the Bend Project, which is now our flagship asset. That’s the one we’re launching our drill program on next week… so the timing of this conversation is perfect. It’s a major catalyst for the company.

So they held those assets and did some early work on them. But with the mining moratorium in place until 2017, there really was no path forward to advance them toward production.

Back Forty became their flagship, and that’s what they focused on. They eventually sold that to Gold Resource Corp., and the Wisconsin assets were placed into a private company — which eventually became GreenLight Metals. We took the company public, listed on the TSX-V in April, and we’ve been working hard to get drills on the ground ever since.

That brings us to where we are today — starting exploration. It’s the first program in Wisconsin since 2011-12 but now in a completely different political environment. Wisconsin is open for business. The 2017 repeal of the moratorium brought with it a new permitting framework and a complete overhaul of how projects advance and get permitted.

We now see Wisconsin as a very favorable jurisdiction. We’re seeing strong support — from township to county to state level — and we’re excited. We have these incredible assets, and now we finally get to go out and explore. That’s how we start creating shareholder value.

Gerardo Del Real: Here’s what I love — I’m going to start with Bend, because I don’t want to overwhelm the audience with descriptions of all the projects. But I do want to provide context. Bend is a copper-gold project with drilling just days away. Importantly, it’s a VMS deposit.

Matt Filgate: Correct. 

Gerardo Del Real: This is critical, regionally, and it’s why I believe GreenLight will be so successful. With the infrastructure that’s already in place, and with VMS deposits never being one-offs — they tend to come in clusters. 

Matt Filgate: Yes, absolutely.

Gerardo Del Real: And the region, already having both public and private mines that are either past-producing and reclaimed, producing, or now moving toward production with the moratorium lifted, the Bend copper-gold project being 100%-owned, being VMS, being copper-gold, with gold at $3,500 and copper looking to make new all-time highs.

And you already have a historic resource and significant drill intercepts from prior work, meaning you’re not going in blind with the drill rig. Can you talk about Bend and why, frankly, it’s the reason I’m holding all my shares? I can’t wait for the results.

Matt Filgate: Absolutely. There was work done there back in the early '90s, and then again in 2011-12. It has a historic resource of four million tonnes averaging 2% copper and 2.3 grams per tonne gold — so about 4% copper equivalent. Really solid grades.

But the majority of that drilling was concentrated in a 330-meter area. There’s a private land parcel that sits along strike, and the previous operators in the '90s could never get access to it. We were able to acquire the rights to drill it. Now we’ve got that land package, and that’s where we’re kicking off our program.

Right now, our focus is showing the upside of the project. Eventually, there will be work needed to bring some of that historic drill core into compliance for a resource estimate. But for now, we’re looking to demonstrate the potential.

Based on the geophysics, especially the VTEM, we believe the VMS ore horizon continues; we see it extending a kilometer, maybe a kilometer and a half. It’s a nice VTEM anomaly.

We believe the deposit has a lot of upside and can grow significantly. Our ultimate goal is to see this become a 15 to 20-plus-million-tonne VMS system. That starts with the work we’re doing right now: step-out drilling to test that VTEM anomaly along strike, show the scale, and then follow up with in-fill drilling to define a resource.

The hope is that we can define an economic resource we can then move through Wisconsin’s permitting process and ultimately build into a producing mine.

Gerardo Del Real: Let’s talk about that permitting process. I know it’s not as sexy as copper and gold, but you have really high tellurium concentrations.

Matt Filgate: Yeah, correct. 

Gerardo Del Real: I recall back in 2016, going to Idaho with my friend and business partner, Mr. Nick Hodge, and visiting the Stibnite Project. It was a very similar scenario: a past-producing project that met some local opposition.

I pontificated for years that the antimony was going to be what finally pushed it across the finish line and that was really going to help them get that permit granted. That permit was just granted less than a few weeks ago.

Matt Filgate: Absolutely.

Gerardo Del Real: Of course, antimony is now being embraced. It’s gotten a lot of Department of Defense money, and the company is well on its way toward building that project with the financing package just announced recently.

Tell me about the tellurium because, again, I know it’s not copper, I know it’s not gold, but I think it’s going to be important down the road.

Matt Filgate: Yes, it is very important. Forty percent of the world’s tellurium production is used in solar panel manufacturing. We saw Rio Tinto do a large deal with one of the biggest solar panel manufacturers for their off-take on tellurium.

At the Bend Project, we always knew there was some tellurium there. But about a year and a half ago, we went back and resampled 400 individual ore samples, and we got an average of around 300 to 350 grams per tonne tellurium. That’s pretty significant.

When we talk about tellurium in the US, there are very few projects that produce it. It’s almost always a byproduct, and most of the time, companies don’t do the metallurgy to extract it — so it ends up getting lost.

We’re in a unique situation because tellurium is a critical metal. It’s in high demand and is needed for national security and the green energy transition. It adds a different element to the deposit. It’s not typical in VMS systems to have this kind of high-grade tellurium.

It’s still early. As part of this drill program, we’ll send some samples for metallurgical testing. Obviously, we’ve got to understand — are these tellurides? Are they bonded with the gold? What’s the metallurgy? Is it extractable?

But it has completely changed the way people are looking at this project. It’s an added bonus. The copper and gold grades are already really high but having that tellurium kicker introduces a whole new angle to the VMS system. We’re extremely excited about it.

It also opens up potential funding from the federal government and the state level. It’s very exciting. 

Gerardo Del Real: I love it. What comes after Bend? I mentioned that you have multiple projects. I think we’ve given Bend a solid introduction: high-grade copper, high-grade gold. It’s a very simple story. Drilling starts in a couple of days. The drilling contractor has been hired, and the crew is being mobilized here within a day or two, if I’m not mistaken. 

Matt Filgate: Correct. The drill crews come in on Monday and we should have drills turning by Wednesday. It’s all happening in real time.

Our secondary asset would be our Lobo and Lobo East projects. These sit right over near Crandon. Lobo is a really exciting project. We own it 100%. We actually own the real estate; we bought that whole land package, about 400 acres.

It’s a project that was drilled in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It was part of the exploration taking place when Exxon was working that area; the same area where they ultimately discovered Crandon. When they found Crandon, it pulled their focus away from Lobo and Lobo East, which is a VTEM anomaly.

They sit about 25 miles from Crandon — so pretty close. And just to remind your audience, Crandon was a discovery by BHP of 60 million tonnes at 1% copper. It’s one of the largest undeveloped VMS deposits in the world. That gives real credit to the entire Penokean volcanic belt — and it’s one of the reasons people were so attracted to it back in the ’80s and ’90s from an exploration standpoint.

Lobo and Lobo East — we’re building draft permits for them right now. We’ll submit them in the next couple weeks to the Department of Natural Resources here in Wisconsin.

Some of the results from Lobo show about 9.5 meters of massive sulfide at 23% zinc, 1.7% copper, 1.9% lead, and over a gram per tonne gold. This was a major discovery. They put six drill holes into it and hit massive sulfide in every hole but then ended up focusing on Crandon believing it was more attractive.

And ultimately, Crandon turned into a massive deposit. Do we have that here? We might. That’s going to be a big focus for us heading into later this year. We’re hoping to start drilling in November or December and into 2026.

Lobo East is a large VTEM-coincident gravity anomaly. It looks very similar to what they drilled at Lobo in terms of the anomaly. We think that’s a low-hanging fruit discovery just waiting to happen.

So between those two projects — which currently sit behind Bend in the broader strategy — they could add a ton of upside and value and potentially shift our focus going into 2026 if we make a big discovery at Lobo East or prove that the system at Lobo is much larger. We only have six drill holes into it; there’s a lot of upside there.

That’s what excites me right now about GreenLight. We have Bend where we see a clear path to a really exciting resource, but we also have these other assets with incredible massive sulfide intercepts that just haven’t seen exploration.

That’s largely due to the lack of companies exploring in Wisconsin over the past 40 years. It’s an exciting portfolio, and we’re very keen to go drill these projects and get them moving forward.

Gerardo Del Real: You have 77.9 million shares outstanding fully diluted. Management and insiders have significant skin in the game at 7%. 

Matt Filgate: Yes, it’s actually closer to 9% as we have been buying actively on the market.

Gerardo Del Real:  Good.

Matt Filgate: We’ve been taking larger positions as we’ve started trading; 22% is institutionally held. That's Vestcor, which is a big fund out of the East Coast of Canada. Delbrook is another major shareholder — both of them are just over 9%.

Then, 71% is retail high net worth; there are about four individuals within that 71% who own close to 30-35% of the stock. We have some very big high-net-worth investors who have taken large positions and have been buying on the market.

Gerardo Del Real:  You have a tiny market cap. Where's the market cap today?

Matt Filgate: We're at C$11 million.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, that's not going to last very long with any kind of success at Bend. I think the timing is absolutely perfect to introduce the story to the audience. 

Before I let you go, the team is going to be critical here… advancing the projects, moving them forward, monetizing them one day, and eventually getting them built. Talk to me a little bit about the team before I let you go because it’s an important component and a big part of why you were able to have that first-mover advantage. 

Matt Filgate: Absolutely. We really built out our board of directors to be Wisconsin-heavy — very focused on people who can open doors, whether it's through permitting, community relations, or government relations.

Steve Donahue is one of our directors; he acts as a pseudo VP of Wisconsin. He’s heavily involved in the company. He runs town hall meetings, handles media, and is a 30-year veteran in the mining space in the Upper Midwest. 

He’s been involved in all of these permits, whether it was Flambeau, Crandon, or the Back Forty project in Michigan. He’s also worked extensively in Minnesota. He knows the politics, he knows the jurisdiction, and he’s been huge in bringing connections at the state, township, and county levels. He’s been a critical part of this.

Then on our board of directors, we’ve got Bill Johnson. His family has been involved in forestry for the past 40 to 50 years in the state. He has all of the connections with the tribes and communities — a very important part of that industry in Wisconsin.

There are a lot of different people on the board, and they bring a wide range of unique experiences tied to Wisconsin. We’re all pulling the rope in the same direction — very, very supportive.

I’ll just give a quick introduction to myself. My background is in mineral exploration. I’ve worked as a geologist for the last 14 years but transitioned more into corporate development, capital raising, and markets when we founded Talisker Resources in 2019. That’s a company that now has a 2-million-ounce resource and is currently in production in British Columbia.

I bring two aspects to this: I can oversee exploration and help guide the geologists and targeting, and also lead on capital markets, raising, and marketing. Our team is very strong and very focused on the mission here. The mission is to bring mining back to Wisconsin. To do that, we have to go out and explore,and advance the projects we have.

We’ve been in a unique position, having a first-mover advantage and being able to come in and handpick the best projects in the state that were available. There are other projects too. We’re constantly reviewing old data, and we’re going to backfill the pipeline with more targets because there’s just so much prospectivity in Wisconsin.

But right now, we’re focused on Bend, Lobo, and Lobo East — advancing those projects, marketing discoveries, and building resources.

Gerardo Del Real: I think it’s going to be an exciting second half of the year. You likely have a lot of Milwaukee Brewers fans on your board… I won’t hold that against you guys! But jokes aside, I’m incredibly excited to be a shareholder, and I’m excited to bring this story to the audience at such an early stage. 

I’ll be honest, folks — you’re all getting in at a lower price than my cost basis. I think it’s a phenomenal entry point.

Matt Filgate: Absolutely. 

Gerardo Del Real: High-grade gold and high-grade copper in the midwestern United States is going to be pretty valuable moving forward. Matt, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking the time. Let’s do it again once those assays start trickling in and as you start seeing some of that core.

Matt Filgate: Yes, thanks, Gerardo. I’ll have to get you out for a Brewers-Cubs game.

Gerardo Del Real: I’m out in Chicago every year so I’ll be out there this year. Let’s try and connect and make that happen. I’ll take you out to Wrigley with me.

Matt Filgate: That would be awesome! 

Gerardo Del Real: Alright, take care, Matt. 

Matt Filgate: Thanks, Gerardo. Cheers. 

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