Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Rockridge Resources (TSX-V: ROCK) CEO Grant Ewing on Early 2020 Drill Campaign at the Raney Gold Project Near the Prolific Timmins Gold District in Ontario

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Rockridge Resources (TSX-V: ROCK)(OTC: RRRLF), Mr. Grant Ewing. Grant, how are you this morning?

Grant Ewing: I'm doing excellent. Thank you.

Gerardo Del Real: We were joking off air that it's a heck of a time to receive exploration permits for a quality gold project. That's exactly what you announced this morning.

You have now received an exploration permit for your Raney Gold Project in Ontario, Canada. You're planning drilling as early 2020 Q1, I believe.

I would love to talk a bit more about the history of the project. We've talked in the past briefly about it, but there's a significant potential here if you can tap into some of these structures that you're going to be targeting.

Grant Ewing: Yeah, that's correct, Gerardo. This is one of our core assets we hold with Rockridge. We have an option to earn 100% interest in the Raney Gold Project. It's located driving distance from Timmins, Ontario, about a hundred odd kilometers to the southwest.

So this project has excellent access and infrastructure, which is very favorable. It's located southwest of this Timmins Gold District that is famous for the production of ounces over the last a hundred years, where 50 million ounces produced in that camp.

What we're going to do with the Raney Gold Project is reactivate this project. It was about 10 years ago that the previous operator conducted exploration at the project. Gold was trading at around US $900 an ounce or so in those days. So we're at a much more favorable gold market today.

Our initial focus will be on a lump of a 6.5 gram per tonne gold grade over 8 meters, that was intercepted late in the program in 2009/2010. And this is open for expansion down plunge, and along strike at depth. So a great target to follow up on.

Gerardo Del Real: And correct me if I'm wrong, but you're targeting the gold-bearing structures and the mineralized shoots down plunge, and you want to get below that 150-meter level. Right?

Grant Ewing: Yeah, that's correct. So the deepest drilling to date on this structure has been about at that level. The best intercept was obtained at that level and never followed up. So that's our primary focus.

This project has a surface exposure of a mineralized alteration shear zone that's been traced over a few hundred meters. And so the top part of this has been tested weakly in the past, and we see the real potential with the depth potential here.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Tell me a bit about the infrastructure, because you have a pretty significant advantage there.

Grant Ewing: Yeah, the infrastructure is excellent. You can drive via pavement and secondary roads right to the drill site in under two hours from Timmins. To the west of us, Newmont Goldcorp just opened its newest gold mine about 35 kilometers west, the Borden mine.

So there's lots of activity in the area, mining activity, excellent infrastructure. So if we do get to the point of developing an economic reserve here, that bodes well for future development potential, the great infrastructure.

Gerardo Del Real: And how many meters and how many holes are you planning for the initial phase one exploration program?

Grant Ewing: This phase one program will be in the order of 2,500 meters roughly. That'll be comprised of 7 to 10 holes. Right now we're just fine-tuning the planning. And this will, as we mentioned, follow up on this intercept that we have, the best intercept drilled historically, and expand that down plunge and at depth on strike.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Looking forward a bit, I want to make sure that we touch on Knife Lake because I know 2020 is going to be a pivotal year for the company, not just with Raney, which obviously you're looking to target that high-grade gold at depth.

But Knife Lake is a deposit that I don't feel has gotten the recognition that I think 2020 is going to bring it. Can we talk a bit about that project?

Grant Ewing: Yes, certainly. So Knife Lake is our second core asset located in mining friendly Saskatchewan, Canada. There we have one copper-dominated VMS deposit discovered. When we got the option on this project, first step was doing an inaugural resource estimate that's 43-101 compliant, and we completed that earlier this year. Then we followed that up with a summer program at Knife. What it did was refine a lot of the high-priority exploration targets within about a 6-kilometer radius of the Knife deposit.

We see excellent potential in expanding the resource there at the deposit scale as well as regionally in some of these high-priority targets. The plan would be to look at advancing that program in terms of exploration in the summer and winter in 2020 as well. So we'd have two projects that are very active in 2020.

Gerardo Del Real: Perfect. Just so I can get it clear. Q1, we commence with drilling hopefully in February. I'm assuming assays a couple of months, maybe 60 days after that. Would that be correct?

Grant Ewing: Yeah, that's roughly the schedule. It depends on the load at the assay labs, but roughly that timeframe we'd look to mobilize and get drilling in the January, February timeframe. And it's about a two-month program initially, the phase one.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Grant, is there anything else that you'd like to add? I always love hearing your take on both the precious metals and the base metals, your macro take on each of those markets. Can you provide a bit of insight there?

Grant Ewing: Yeah, we've decided to focus in early 2020 on our Raney project. We think the gold market is looking very conducive for investment attention right now. Gold recently broke out of this $1,400 price range after trading in a real horizontal fashion for several years. So we like the technical aspects of the gold price projections going forward. I think it times well with our Raney program.

On the Knife Lake project, it's a copper dominated story and copper has been flatlining here for several years. But we think that the future bodes well for the price of copper, so we're happy to have that as our second core asset in Rockridge.

Gerardo Del Real: I think you're spot on with that. I'm looking forward to chatting again once drilling commences and you finalize the program. Grant, thank you so much for your time today.

Grant Ewing: Very good. Thank you very much.