Categories: Energy / Precious Metals
Topics: General Energy / General Precious Metals

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on Five Drill Rig Resource Expansion Program at the Rajapalot Gold Project in Finland

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

Michael Hudson: Happy New Year, Gerardo. I'm on top of the world.

Gerardo Del Real: Happy New Year to you as well. I have to ask, because of your location, how are things with your countrymates? You and I had a discussion off the record. I would love to ask you on the record how things are coming along out there.

Michael Hudson: Well, it's been a horrific summer down here in Australia with bushfires that are not unusual of course in our landscape. But it's been the perfect storm of a drought, of lots of areas coming together, smaller fires creating big fires and putting lots of stress and sadness on lots of different communities. So it's been a challenge and one that we've faced before and Australian resilience is being shown. But yeah, very, very, very tough for many people. Fortunately, I've been on the periphery of the areas that have been affected. But yeah, a tough summer.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, all our best to everybody out there that has been affected and will be affected and nothing but good energies that way.

Let's pivot a bit and let's talk Finland. You are on the record the last quarter of the year, Q4, as saying, "We have a market." We bumped into each other at a conference, I believe at Beaver Creek. I said, "Mike, how are things going along?" And you said, "We have a market, mate." And I believe we do and Mawson is looking to capitalize on that.

You now have mobilized five drill rigs. You look to have consistent news flow for, at the very least, the next five months. You are, of course, very well cashed up. I would love an overview of what the next five months might look like because there's lots to be excited about for exploration companies that are actually exploring. And you have a heck of a head start with the resource both on the gold side and obviously on the cobalt side as well.

Michael Hudson: We announced today a large drill program with five rigs. It's very unusual to see multi-rig programs in this space. Discoveries only come through drilling, Gerardo, and we've got five rigs on the ground as we speak in Finland to conduct a 15 kilometer drill program over the next four months. That will lead to news flow consistently over the next five months at least.

The aim of the program is to be in a position to put an updated resource calculation together at the end of Q2, Q3 this year. It's a lower risk program in an exploration sense because we are literally drilling below and along strike from existing gold hits, so our discovery rate should be good. Let's see what the drill rigs provide.

But we have cracked the code in many respects to this deposit over the last year. We have very strong geological understanding mixed with intimate geophysical controls, and that's given us the knowledge on where to drill. So we're drilling three specific areas over a 3 by 4 kilometer area, down hundreds and hundreds of meters, 500 or 600 meters down plunge in each one of these bodies. To date those three bodies, each of them are providing about 70,000 to 90,000 ounces per hundred meters down plunge extent.

So, you can start to see where we're going in terms of our aim is to go north of a million ounces in this drill program and it's really only limited to the area that we're seeing here. We're doing a lot more geophysics in the larger area to define more of these high-grade shoots, of which we're drilling three of those as we speak. We've got a lot of time and energy and money going into metallurgical studies as well.

So it's really a very, very busy time. That time we met in Beaver Creek was when we started funding the company. We raised $7.9 million Canadian in November, well-funded and it's drill baby, drill.

Gerardo Del Real: Now I believe that Mawson is permitted for all year-round drilling, correct? Within what, four permit areas? Is that accurate? I know there's always questions around Mawson for whatever reason in regards to permits and permitting and access. What does that look like right now? Just to clarify it for everybody.

Michael Hudson: Yeah now we're fully permitted, Gerardo, and have been for the last four years and we've got another two years ahead of us. So we have different areas. There's four different areas, specifically, you've mentioned there. Some are permitted winter-only drilling and that's why we've got the five rigs in now. It's quite wet and we need the frozen ground. Whereas in other areas where we had one rig turning from November before the snow really set and that was drilling from summer and winter-permitted areas back into one of the three resource areas called Palokas.

So we've got literally hundreds of drill platforms permitted. So that's not the concern today. We've done a lot of work on over the last few years as we've spoken about and fully permitted.

Gerardo Del Real: Well with $1,550 gold, Mike, it looks to be an exciting year for Mawson. Higher quality targets, better geologic understanding, you're cashed up, you have five rigs turning. I get the feeling you and I will be chatting often here over the next several months.

Michael Hudson: And that I look forward to with more gold in hand as the drill rigs turn, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Fingers crossed, Mike. Thank you so much for the update. I appreciate it.

Michael Hudson: Thank you

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