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NevGold (TSX-V: NAU)(OTC: NAUFF) CEO Brandon Bonifacio on Drilling toward a 2 Million Ounce Gold Resource Profile in the Western United States
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of NevGold — Mr. Brandon Bonifacio. Brandon… a very busy Brandon… how are you, sir?
Brandon Bonifacio: Good, thanks. Yeah, busy is good… all-things considering… but doing well. How about yourself, Gerardo?
Gerardo Del Real: I am well. Thank you for asking. Busy as well. Let's get into the busy part of Nev and yourself. It's been ‘quality’ busy. On June 2, you announced a new discovery at the Cadillac’s Valley South. It was a 650 meter step-out of more oxide gold.
And then, you followed that up two weeks later with an announcement that you're acquiring the Nutmeg Mountain Gold Project. And it was interesting because there was also a strategic investment by GoldMining Inc., which I'm also very familiar with as you know. And so, a busy and important month of June for the company. Congratulations on both fronts.
Brandon Bonifacio: Thank you. Yeah, very positive to build on some of the momentum we've been seeing out of Limousine Butte in Nevada — and that hasn't changed. And I want to make that clear to your audience is we're still going to be very active in Nevada. But when opportunities arise, you have to take advantage.
And I think allowing us to build a larger platform in the western part of the US was always the focus of the company. We're focused on building a multi-million ounce heap leach platform in the western part of the US. And I think this Nutmeg Mountain acquisition, or option to acquire, really checks that box for the company.
Gerardo Del Real: Tell me what attracted you to the project. You talked about checking that box. What boxes does this check off other than, obviously, a great jurisdiction — a great part of the country to work in?
Brandon Bonifacio: I think that immediate exposure to what is a global resource of 1.1 million ounces. So it's 910,000 ounces of Indicated and 160,000 ounces of Inferred. And the mineralization starts at surface.
So you can see that in some of our public disclosure that we've put out and that we will continue to put out. This mineralization trends to surface and it’s outcropping. But we're also seeing that 1.1 million ounces being larger.
So we've conducted a lot of due diligence on this project from technical, to social, to permitting, to environmental. And from our standpoint, when you're looking at projects that our group has, this one checked a lot of boxes in terms of what you want to see from an advanced development asset standpoint.
Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk the strategic investment from GoldMining. Obviously, it enhances NevGold's profile but it also provides GoldMining shareholders with some exposure to what looks like a quick march towards a 2 million ounce resource profile in great jurisdictions for NevGold. And then, we have to talk about the discovery, which, obviously, is going to contribute to that pretty substantially.
Brandon Bonifacio: Definitely, and I think this business can be challenging at times but this is a true win-win. And I think Alastair touched on that in his interview. And then I've known their group for a while and they've known our group.
And I think this creates a win-win for both companies in terms of us being able to advance an asset that was deemed non-core to GoldMining — but us having the right team and the right operating infrastructure in the western part of the US to really advance and create value from the asset like we have done at Limousine Butte.
I think when we look at these projects and when we came into Limousine Butte, we had a clearly defined roadmap of what we wanted to accomplish in short order for limited dilution — lot of bang for your buck in terms of where we spent the dollars and what we felt we could drive from a valuation standpoint. And that's no different than Nutmeg.
We have a clear plan for the next 12 months in terms of what we want to do — from drilling to an updated resource and then pushing that into the engineering level studies. And we think we can get that done for approximately C$4 million and deliver at either a preliminary economic assessment or pre-feasibility study at Nutmeg Mountain by Q2 of next year.
So we have a clear roadmap at Nutmeg, and we will continue to drive our positive momentum at Limousine Butte with further drilling to try and fill in some of those gaps, like you mentioned, especially considering this Cadillac Valley self discovery.
So again, from a NevGold standpoint, two critical assets in the western part of the US, and both of those are tracking to updated resources in the near-term, which is fantastic for our shareholders.
Gerardo Del Real: You're on budget and on schedule with the 10,000 meter drill program. The intercepts have been fantastic. The quality of the mineralization has been fantastic as well. It's been oxidized. The grades have been on point. It looks like you're firing on all cylinders right now, Brandon. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
Brandon Bonifacio: No, I think it's an exciting time, like I've always said, to look at the company. We should have some more assays coming out of Nevada shortly, which is obviously still a key part of the story going forward.
And we look forward to getting our hands onto Nutmeg Mountain after closing and really hitting the ground running. We believe we can start drilling the project in the coming months. So it's not going to be a long wait for our shareholders, and both of those projects will see drilling attention over Q3 and Q4 — driving to updated resources by Q1 of next year.
So it's a really exciting time for the company. And as we know, markets have been challenging as of late, but from a company standpoint, we have clearly-stated objectives. We're on budget… we're on schedule… and that will not waiver going forward.
Gerardo Del Real: Well done. Great work. Love to see the execution in a tough market. Can't wait for the market that I know is coming. Thanks a lot, Brandon.
Brandon Bonifacio: Thanks, Gerardo.