Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Mawson Gold (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF) CEO Ivan Fairhall on Securing Drill Ready Skelleftea Gold Project in World Class Gold Belt

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Mawson Gold, Mr. Ivan Fairhall. Ivan, how are you?

Ivan Fairhall: I'm great, Gerardo. How are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am excellent. Thank you for asking. A busy start to 2022. Last time we chatted, you had a drill program that was imminent. I believe that now has commenced. And as if you weren't busy enough, you just optioned, you acquired an option for 85% of another gold project in Northern Sweden. I would love to learn more about the project because this one is new to me.

Ivan Fairhall: Sure. Yeah. Look, it's a really exciting project and we sourced it from our network. I think probably not many people got the opportunity to see it and when we cast our eyes on it, we knew it was a deal we wanted to do. It's a really fantastic property.

Gerardo Del Real: Tell me more about what made it attractive to you. I understand that it's within a belt that is a modern gold field that's produced over 6 million ounces of gold.

Ivan Fairhall: Yeah. Yeah. Look, regional context is important. This property is surrounded by four mines that have produced 6 million ounces of gold. One's only two kilometers away. Boliden, I think that everyone would've heard of the company Boliden, they have their namesake mine seven or so kilometers away from the project. And they call the belt the Skellefteå belt. It's also got 85 polymetallic sulfide deposits. So it's not just one of the most geologically interesting regions in the Nordics, it's also obviously, for the reasons of the existing mines, an established mining community with labor, supplies. The community understands mining and they love the prosperity that that can bring. So they're obviously great ingredients for developing a project and making discoveries and being able to move them forward quickly.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned regional context. I think it's important to highlight that boulder outcrops are rare. They're not rare to Mawson Gold because your current project also has boulder outcrops. But this project here according to the release has multiple gold outcrops across a three kilometer by six kilometer permit area, grading up to 15.1 grams per tonne. Tell me a bit about the approach to exploring the project, because you're now going to be able to prioritize exploration on one project while developing another into what I believe is going to be a producing mine one day.

Ivan Fairhall: Yeah, sure. I think this boulder outcrop is such an important part of the story. And really, what grabbed our attention so comprehensively is that part of the world, Finland, Northern Sweden is covered 99.9% probably covered by this thin layer of glacial till where we've got it at the Rajapalot project, it's a few meters thick and predominantly around the project. And so when you get outcrop with gold running 15.1 grams a tonne or we've done a trench that's 3.8 meters at 4.5 grams a tonne, you're effectively a long way down making the path of the discovery. And what that says is it's such a prospective region in the world where you can't see undercover and then when you find an outcrop with gold in it, it allows you to just massively zero in your search base.

And so I referenced in the news release that last time we had an outcrop like this in Mawson's portfolio, we found Palokas. Okay? And that helped us identify that Rajapalot area and we obviously went on to drill out the million-ounce resource there, starting with that outcrop. And so we're obviously excited to have another outcrop to go and put a drill hole into.

Gerardo Del Real: Rajapalot, of course, is the flagship, but what will exploration look like for this project?

Ivan Fairhall: Oh, it's drill ready. So we're going to just do a little bit more magnetic work just to make sure we understand the structure. We've got regional mags, and we're going to do that a little bit more high definition. But you've got gold in outcrop, you go and drill the gold and find out what lies beneath. So we've got this 180-meter outcrop, got the right rocks all the way along. We've done a number of channel samples and there's nice consistency to that. And that's 180 meters long, but you look at the magnetics and we see it's a two-kilometer anomaly underneath. And so we will plan to drill that outcrop, drill that anomaly and start to really understand what's going on underneath the surface.

Gerardo Del Real: Should be an exciting 2022. Anything else to add to that, Ivan?

Ivan Fairhall: No, look, it is an exciting 2022. We're flat out with, like we mentioned last time, Rajaplaot we're drilling, we're really focusing on growing that project and demonstrating, got a very large land package up there and stepping away from where we've defined that million-ounce resource and building pipeline targets to show, help people understand the path between what we have today, a million ounces, and how we get to 2, 3, 4. This is not something we're trying to grow just by a few more hundred thousand ounces. We've really got big aspirations for that, what we think is a gold camp. And we need to go put some drill holes around there, now that we've got our million-ounce deposit, and build on that.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I know that a staking activity is heating up right near where you're at. I don't think it's a coincidence. You mentioned the network and being able to leverage that and how many, many groups did not have access to this type of project. So between Australia and Finland and Sweden, there's a lot to like.

Ivan Fairhall: Exactly. Huge optionality in the portfolio and we're effectively drilling all of those projects in the next six months, so lots for investors to pay attention to.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to having you back on. Thanks again, Ivan and appreciate your time a lot.

Ivan Fairhall: Yeah. Cheers, Gerardo. Thanks, mate.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Cheers now.

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