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

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on Working Towards a Maiden Resource as Winter Drilling Begins at the Rajapalot Gold-Cobalt 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. Mike, how are you this morning?

Michael Hudson: As I always tell you, top of the world, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, Q4 always seems to be the time where all the better companies in this tough, tough market get back out there and get to exploring. You've commenced diamond drilling at Rajapalot in Finland. Can we talk about the gold cobalt project? And I should really reiterate, it is now a gold-cobalt project of significance in Finland. Can we talk about the diamond drilling program a bit, Mike?

Michael Hudson: Sure, Gerardo. We came out of a 16 kilometer drill program that finished around April this year, and it's taken quite a number of months to pull all that together. Then we've re-assayed over 7,000 results from that program and earlier drilling around mineralized intersections for that cobalt, to assay for that cobalt and other elements.

Cobalt has stacked up amazingly well across the project. It's added continuity, width, about a 20 to 30% increase in in situ value to the gold. So, it works technically, and then of course it creates a strategic project for Finland, which is much more exciting in many respects than a gold only project. So, the gold will drive the project, the cobalt will add a sweetener from both the strategic and the technical point of view.

So, this is our first drill program post all of that work. 2,500 meters we're drilling in areas where we're permitted to drill all year round. The snow is not started yet in earnest. I know we had our first snow up there a few days ago in Northern Finland, but really winter drilling starts in late December. So, this is drilling on non-snow conditions in the Hirvimaa area, which is north and east and south of the very good work and intersections and results and where we're putting the maiden resource together in and around the Rajapalot area itself.

Gerardo Del Real: Now, when we talk about the Rajapalot area and we talk about the resource, is it going to be a gold and cobalt resource? Because I mentioned off the top that this is now an important gold-cobalt project. There's some very significant and, frankly, very important cobalt credits to that project now that have emerged recently. They're not new to you, but, again, I give your team credit for not wanting to publish those results in the public domain until you were sure that it was a legitimate cobalt credit that could be of importance to this project. Can you speak to that a bit, Mike?

Michael Hudson: Yeah. We knew there was cobalt in one small part of the project, but we didn't assay over the larger area for multi-elements geochemistry until those 7,000 assays that I just referred to. So, it was a number of years of just assaying for gold only, and that was a decision made for economic reasons. It's quite expensive to assay all elements, and there wasn't a lot of dollars in the business. But, we saw the opportunity, of course, with the cobalt as we did a few more assays, and it spread right across the project.

Importantly, to answer your question, the cobalt and the gold are intimately associated with each other. So, basically, the cobalt adds shoulders to the gold results, if you like. So it adds further width on either side and then continues through to the gold zone. So, it will be a gold and cobalt resource, and a gold equivalent number will be produced as part of that as well as gold and cobalt assays.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. So, just to summarize, what do the next couple of months, or I should say the next quarter look like, Mike, for Mawson Resources?

Michael Hudson: Very busy, Gerardo. We've got around $10 million cash in the bank. We've got this drill program starting. We've got metallurgical work underway, specifically with the cobalt, and then seeing how that will mix and match with the free gold that we know we have already. There's a geophysical crew pretty much permanently at site at the moment, because geophysics has really worked so well for us in the last drill season. So, we've got magnetics, electromagnetics, induced polarization, all these weird words around geophysics that continually will be measured out there to extend the known systems and to look for blind ones.

Then all that program will culminate, ideally, at the end of the year, probably into the new year with this maiden resource that we're working on at the moment. Then, it will all tie into a large winter program, where we've got 15 to 20 kilometers planned, from January right through to April again. So, a hell of a lot happening. The project, importantly, is pivoting, as we've spoken about before over the last month, from that very exciting discovery phase to, my goodness, look at this, it's starting to hang together, and we're putting together resources and expanding them, and putting economic criteria around them in a more advanced way. So, an exciting time for the project.

Gerardo Del Real: As far as exploration upside, one last point. Where you're doing this resource calculation, it's literally the tip of the iceberg. I mean, this is a very, very small, tiny portion of the entire land package. Can you just provide a little context there, Mike?

Michael Hudson: Yeah. It's a good point. It's always a difficult one, to work out when to put out a maiden or an initial resource. But, we've made the decision to do that now. We've tested probably 5% of our host horizon within our land package, simply put. So, there's a lot of work to do, and the initial resource will be reflective of just that 5% of the area that we've tested.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Mike, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Bye, Mike.

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