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

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) President Dr. Nick Cook & CEO Michael Hudson on the New Gold-Cobalt Discovery in Rumajärvi, Finland

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today, and I’m actually happy and honored to have him on, is the President of Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF), Dr. Nick Cook, and of course, the Chairman, CEO and Director, Mr. Michael Hudson, all the way from Finland. Gentleman, good morning to you.

Nick Cook: Good morning.

Michael Hudson: Good morning, Gerardo. Am I chopped liver now? Am I?

Gerardo Del Real: Well you're going to have to take a backseat to Dr. Nick Cook today because I don't get a chance to chat with him often. It comes on a day that I think is perfect for this interview. Mawson just announced a new gold-cobalt discovery in Finland, you happen to be there.

I want to talk about assays and the new discovery, but before I get to that I want to provide a bit of color, and I'd love if Mr. Cook could provide it for us. The last time you and I spoke, Mike, I talked about the fact that the news release sounded like the team was a lot more confident about the handles of the system and where it was going and, obviously, I don't think it's a coincidence that just one release later, we have a new gold-cobalt discovery with 23 holes, I believe, with full assays remaining to be reported.

Nick, could you do us a favor and explain the nature of the system that you have, the scale of it and where the focus is now? And then, Mike, we can definitely talk about the assays.

Nick Cook: Okay sure. People will probably know that we have three main resource areas that we've been working on. But in order to show the scale of the project, we also wanted to go outside those where we had some encouraging signs. While we were considering where we were going and how it was all working, we put some of our drill efforts across into the southwest corner of the project area where we had some hints in the past. We were happy to come up with reported intersections such as was released today, the PAL0182 hole at a place called Rumajarvi. That was 7.4 meters at 4.4 grams of gold equivalent.

And so we're very encouraged by that, and you mentioned the other 23 holes remain to be reported. We've reported that we've seen visible gold in some of those, so we're keen to see the assays come back from the lab and are looking forward to reporting on those soon, too.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. You mentioned the 7.4 meters of 4.4 grams per ton gold equivalent. I think it's important to note that that starts from a relatively shallow area. It starts I believe at what? 86 meters or so?

Nick Cook: Yeah, that's right. So relatively shallow, and also you'll see in that press release there was one from the surface. So the good thing about that is once we get onto these systems and now we believe we understand their controls, we'll be able to work them up and especially move out to the northwest.

We're actually almost already looking forward to next winter and preparing drill sites to continue testing this material out to the northwest. Readers and listeners will know that it takes a while to build these systems, and we'll certainly be keen to work on that next season, and we'll be following it up with some ground geophysics to see how far we can see it with that.

Gerardo Del Real: This new gold-cobalt discovery, this new zone, where is it relative to the current resource that's in place?

Nick Cook: Okay, so the main resource was at Raja. And it's across 700 meters to the west of the Raja prospect and about 1.1 kilometers to the south of the Palokas prospects. And it sits in a corridor that we knew about and so we were keen to go and spend some of, maybe 20% of, our time looking outside the current resource areas to see what new areas we could discover and provide some extra targets and extra tonnes for next year's work.

Gerardo Del Real: I'm always fascinated by the discovery process, and I understand that this new corridor has 6 modelled geophysical conductors and frankly, there's only been 4 drill holes, according to the release, that have tested these conductors out.

Now I understand that the way that you got to this is initially with the boulders, then the geophysical surveys and of course the scout drilling. Can we talk about that process a bit and kind of what's next and what you do to follow all this up testing those corridors there?

Nick Cook: Sure. Well one of the most exciting things, I suppose, about this area is it's actually the biggest boulder field of the lot. So there are lots of boulders there giving the idea that there's lots of material being eroded away by the glacier, so there's certainly more to find. Having gone in and found these conductive areas, we know that those conductors are nearly always associated with gold and then it's a matter or working up from there and looking carefully at those conductors.

So in this case, we did the ground geophysics and that showed that these conductors were there. You'll see from our other drilling at Palokas and Raja prospects that once you understand where in those plates the gold sits, you can follow them out with some success.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. As far as true thickness, do you have a handle on that on today's assays?

Nick Cook: This is a little harder to answer because some of these things are vein-like. It will be close to true thickness is the key. But we'll be working on following them up, and we will know more about that.

So far every time we drill away from the surface and go down, the grades certainly don't decrease. So we're encouraged by what we've got to date, and we're certainly encouraged that we will find more in the future.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. When we talk about this new discovery, and we talk about boulder fields, we're not talking five or six. I understand there's a total of 55 boulders and outcrops with greater than 0.1 grams per ton gold. Is that accurate?

Nick Cook: Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's certainly the biggest boulder field that we've got and given that our resources don't come from here, I suppose I find that encouraging as a geologist that it gives plenty of upside potential.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. You have an excellent partner, you're cashed up, you have 23 holes remaining. What's next?

Nick Cook: We've seen some visible gold in some of the material that's yet to be reported. As you mentioned earlier on, we've actually got fairly clear idea of the really quite linear control on some of the mineralization. And the good thing about that is I'm encouraged that usually where we see gold in the drill core, we come back with good numbers. So let's hope that trend continues. I'm actually looking forward to writing the next couple of press releases, because I've got quite a lot of faith in them.

Gerardo Del Real: Well I'm looking forward to having you and Mike back on for those. Mike, is there anything you'd like to add?

Michael Hudson: One simple line, Gerardo. "A legitimate discovery always keeps on getting better."

Gerardo Del Real: Well done, sir. Well done. That's why you are the Chairman. Thank you so much, gentleman, I really appreciate the time, and I can't wait for the next set of assays.

Nick Cook: Neither can we, take care.

Gerardo Del Real: You too now.

Michael Hudson: Thanks now.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.

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