Categories: Precious Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: Gold Stocks / Copper Stocks

Hannan Metals (TSX-V: HAN)(OTC: HANNF) CEO Michael Hudson on Optioning Three High-Grade Gold Projects in Sweden as Drill Permitting Advances at Flagship Previsto Gold-Copper Project in Peru

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Hannan Metals, Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, a heck of a week in the metal space. How are you doing?

I've been around long enough to know that it's a volatile business and you stick to your knitting and make discoveries and drill a lot. And that's how we create value.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, let's get to the value portion of it. Because I was telling someone earlier today, I was talking to a shareholder and the question was, ‘I saw this news about Hannan optioning over three high-grade gold projects in Sweden. What does it mean?’ And my initial response was, it means Michael Hudson is running the same playbook that he ran, or a similar one at least, back when Southern Cross Gold was Mawson Gold.

And I reminded them that at one point Mawson was a 40-, 50-million-dollar company that now, called Southern Cross Gold, of course, has turned into a two-and-a-half-billion-dollar company. 

And I think a lot of people forget that the initial entryway for Mawson was with high-grade gold Swedish projects. So you can imagine my enthusiasm because we all know that the flagship is Previsto. And I want to be clear, that is absolutely the flagship. We know the potential scale of that prize.

And look, the knock on that has been it's an impatient market, and it's great that we know we have this huge anchor. But the real catalyst there is the drilling, despite the great news coming out of the camp. 

And that's not going to happen until early 2027. So you can imagine how delighted I was when I opened my inbox and I see that you've now secured over three high-grade gold projects in Sweden. And one is permitted, drill-ready and ready to go, and looking for high-grade gold.

I would love for you to provide a little context on why these projects? And then I have some follow-ups to that, but let's start there. Why these projects and why now?

Michael Hudson: Well, why these projects? Let's just stand back. I started by saying that you make value in this business by making discoveries and making sure you've got the momentum and the lower cost of capital to drill. And we faced, in Peru, this amazing discovery that is advancing towards permitting and is a massive system that we're very excited about.

But we saw that pushing into next year. We've got the wet season between November and March. And even if we're permitted at the end of the year, it was pushing into '27, as you referenced. So waiting in a bull market for Peruvian regulators doesn't seem to me to be a good idea in creating value in a junior, especially when there's momentum. If the market is not working, it's best to retain cash, sit on it and do nothing. And that's sometimes the best thing to do in this business. But it's not the time now.

As you mentioned, I've had a lot of time in the Nordics, and I know Finland and Sweden very well. And in Mawson in the day, we had projects in Finland that were a bit slow to permit. And we took some projects down in Australia next to Fosterville and they became Southern Cross. And the Finnish projects have merged and gone into a company now called Goldsky. Combined, that's over $3 billion worth of value.

So if you make discoveries, you can do lots of different things with them. And we said, let's keep the momentum going, and we found these projects with people we know and trust in Sweden. A couple of geologists that actually helped me start Southern Cross, so people we've known and trust. And when you're next to a four-million-ounce system at 15 grams with the same rocks, it's a pretty good analog.

We're looking at a camp-scale analog to Europe's greatest gold mine. So that 54 million ounces at 15 grams is a project, or mine, called Boliden. And 20 kilometers from that, on one of these key properties we picked up Sweden's oldest mine that has never seen a drill hole, that was mined over kilometers with hundreds of old historic workings. And in the day, mining up to 1,000-plus grams because it was hand-sorted, but some very high-grade material there that's never seen a drill hole.

So that's a playbook of drilling under historic mines that we've done before. In this case, it was mined since the 1700s and has never seen a drill hole. We've got another project that is similar to the first one in many ways, orogenic gold opportunities. And then we had a drilling issue in terms of timing in Peru so we didn't want to create two issues. 

We were waiting for drilling on two projects. So we made it a condition precedent to have a drill rig ready and have a drill-permitted project amongst one of the three, and that we did. A drill rig will be on the ground in the next week or so and we're off to the races.

Gerardo Del Real: Explain to the audience and to myself what exactly you're hoping to see from the initial drill program. What are you targeting, I guess is the question, right?

Michael Hudson: For sure. Let's just talk about one of the projects to keep it simple. There are three projects that I mentioned. The key project is Stavaträsk, which has got the drill permit. It's got mineralization over kilometers. And mineralization that ticks all the same boxes as Boliden. So massive sulfide, high-grade gold, copper and silver, with hand specimen for hand specimen looking like geological twins. So we see that at surface.

We've got grades up to 90 grams, 93 grams gold in outcrop, just in a forestry road that was made under four or five meters of glacial till cover. So just by fluke, a road went through and found a 90-gram outcrop. And then we've got boulders over a much larger area that are all mineralized.

This project has had drill holes. We don't know the results of those from sometime in the '90s, and we know where those collars are. But we need to drill under this high-grade outcrop. Perhaps take a view on the old drilling and see what they were targeting. And take a much bigger picture that these old drill holes are just located in postage stamps on this project. So there's so much more to find, let alone those little postage-stamp areas that were tested before.

We've got to define grade, and then we've got to define scale. So let's get the drill rig turning and see if we can find some grade beneath these high-grade outcrops. Number one, that's the lowest-hanging fruit. And then under some of the boulder fields. And then we'll come and do some geophysics to demonstrate scale.

And this project should be amenable to geophysics. There's a lot of gold in disseminated sulfides, so that would work for IP. And we know the massive sulfides, like the outcrop, have ounces of gold and they should be amenable to electromagnetics. So that's what we're thinking next. Grade and scale, demonstrate the grade and then make it bigger.

Gerardo Del Real: It sounds like, again, the Michael Hudson playbook, right? I know there's a great team behind you there, and it's methodical and targeted. When do you anticipate we may start seeing assays?

Michael Hudson: Well, as I mentioned, the first drill rig, the only drill rig, we only got one moving at this stage, will be at site within the next week or so. Literally we're just signing the drill contract and the drill rig is available. And then I imagine it will take weeks for the first drill holes to be completed, subject to everything going well.

And then we will rush the drill assays. Because we really do want to know and we've got some share-based payments based on the number of meters of drilling. So we want to know the results quickly. So there you go. That's six to eight weeks from here, I imagine we'll see something.

Gerardo Del Real: The potential for a high-grade discovery with an analog being a 4.1-million-ounce gold system at 15 grams per tonne. Anything near that I think is going to really wake the market up. I think it's a heck of an opportunity at current levels. The stock obviously has been sold, especially given the recent selloff in the overall space. But I think that presents a heck of an opportunity as a shareholder.

Thank you for getting out there and really keeping at it and bringing in some quality projects that can provide a near-term catalyst. How are things going at ‘The Monster’ at Previsto, which, again, I want to emphasize, remains the flagship and remains the big prize?

Michael Hudson: That's right. We sort of got it at the start. This is not a pivot from Peru. This is complementary and filling in at halftime while we wait for the full-time siren to get the rigs into Previsto. The majority of our expenditure in the company will still be in Peru. We've got six geologists monthly in and out of that project making it bigger, de-risking it at surface.

Some of the last results are, we had 148 samples and every one of them was mineralized. It's a gold-copper system. It's only going to get bigger. We've only started to just look at a very small part of it because it is in the jungle. So we have to take vegetation off the top of the rocks and find the gold literally scrape by scrape. But that's methodical work.

And then the permitting is going well. We held a public participation meeting with the local community over the last few weeks. That was in our last press release. There were 200 people there, and that was very well received. That was the last step to putting the drill permit in, which will go in the next few weeks, and then we'll be waiting for that.

And like I said, we'll be pushing for that to be granted before year-end if we can. But even if we get it then, we can't mobilize during the wet season. So we're waiting for the end of the first quarter of next year, at best really, from a logistical point of view.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, there's a lot to be excited for. I'm looking forward to assays. I am excited with the suite of projects. And excited for the prospect of being able to have consistent news flow, not just from Previsto, but from these projects as well for the rest of the year. Anything to add to that, Mike?

Michael Hudson: No, let's just get on with it, Gerardo, and make discoveries. That's what we know how to do well. And I love high-grade gold. I love discovery, and I love how these companies can create amazing value literally overnight with the mix of those ingredients.

I look forward to updating you as we go forward here. It's an amazing opportunity, and I'm excited on both the European and South American side in finding gold.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you for your time, Mike. Looking forward to having you back on, and I appreciate it as always.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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