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

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on High-Grade Gold Results with a Cobalt Companion at the Raja Prospect in Finland

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

Michael Hudson: Top of the world, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: It's good hearing from you. You're one of the hardest working chairmen and CEOs out there in the space right now. We were talking off-air a bit. Kudos to you. I'll say it on-air what I said privately just 10 minutes ago. You're out there creating catalysts for the multiple companies you're involved with, at a time where a lot of CEOs and a lot of chairmen and chairwomen are sitting on their hands and just hoping for the market to turn.

So with all that being said, we got some great news out of Mawson. We talked the last few times, I mentioned on-air that it seemed like you were getting a better understanding of the controls and the system, and sure enough you had a release today that really speaks to that. The highlight number out of Raja in Finland is a 19.7-meter intercept of 8.9 grams per tonne gold equivalent. You reported 5 gold-cobalt results today.

Can you speak to that a bit? Because this is getting really interesting, really quick. A lot to take in.

Michael Hudson: Thank you, Geraldo. We drilled 15 kilometers that we finished with the drill rigs on site about a month ago, but we're still producing many results, and many more to come, I should say, from that program. What we saw today is a spectacular result, a very strong result. The context is that we are now targeting grade within and beyond the resource areas that we defined in that maiden resource in December. So that resource is growing quickly, and you can't beat grade and you can't beat being able to target grade. That comes after years of understanding here.

The term that Dr. Nick Cook, who's the president of Mawson and the brains behind Mawson, is late and straight. So basically this gold is amazingly straight, and we're targeting it along these lines essentially. They're lineations which means that these bodies are like big fat cigars that are maybe 100 meters wide and 20 or 30 meters high, but they are very long. We chased this high-grade zone for a quarter of a kilometer, 250 meters, and we still got more holes to report from within it. From an economic point of view you can't beat grade.

Gerardo Del Real: We talked about the importance before of the cobalt kicker, which is now not so much a kicker. We're starting to learn it's a hand-in-hand companion to the gold values. But you also reported some cobalt assays for holes that previously you had only reported the gold assays on. Can you speak to that? Because those contributions are getting more and more significant.

Michael Hudson: Yeah. What we're doing now is mainly producing gold and cobalt at the same time. The difference in reporting them at different times is, of course, gold comes back a lot quicker from the assay lab than the cobalt. So we were catching up there, and basically we see a nice kick in the in-situ value, or that gold equivalent value, of the rock. So there was a couple of results that were 30 to 60% higher from the cobalt, but the average we're seeing across the positives is closer to 20%. So it's a very nice addition as a byproduct.

We've been funded for quite a lot of cash from the Finnish system recently in a project called the BATCircle because now this asset is strategic for Finland. Finland plays a huge role in the supply chain for cobalt. And we just saw Umicore purchase about 60% of the world's largest cobalt refinery during the week for $150 million in Finland. So that just shows the importance of the supply chains out there. 90% of the feed stock for that refinery comes from the DRC today, and we're 400 kilometers from that refinery. So an important addition within the deposit, but equally important from the strategic nature of what this creates, and it creates continuity also technically. So it adds on many levels, the cobalt.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. You mentioned there're still assays in the lab. I believe there were 16 holes with full assays that remain to be reported. Is that correct?

Michael Hudson: Yes. And a number of those still have visible gold that we've quoted through the press release and generally that works well. But we're looking forward to seeing those results and reporting them over the next month or so. As they say, stay tuned. We've had a very strong end to the season and that's playing out now.

Gerardo Del Real: I would love to see pictures of the core up on the website if they're not already up, Mike, as you get the assays in. So I'll be looking for that. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Michael Hudson: Take a look at the current presentation, Gerardo, and there's pictures of gold all over the front of that in the first few pages, that just demonstrates that shiny stuff pretty well.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, mawsonresources.com. Mike, thank you so much for your time today, appreciate it. I get the feeling we'll be chatting soon, and talking about some more of that visible gold.

Michael Hudson: That we will.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, Mike.

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