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

T2 Metals (TSX-V: TWO)(OTC: AGLAF) CEO Mark Saxon on Vectoring-In on VHMS-Style Copper-Zinc-Gold in the Prolific Flin Flon Mining Camp of Manitoba, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of T2 Metals — Mr. Mark Saxon. Mark, great to have you back on. We got a chance to catch up at PDAC. Glad we both made it back safely. How are you today?

Mark Saxon: Gerardo, good afternoon. Good to talk to you. And yes, I'm safe at home and I hope you are as well. It was a big PDAC with lots of great faces there and lots of great interactions. And it's good to be doing this kind of stuff in person again, and it was a very good week for us at T2. And looking forward to a good year.

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Let's get right into it. You have a project in Nevada that I really like. You have another project in Arizona that I also really like. And you have one in Manitoba that I think is really underappreciated by the market. 

And I think, if I'm being honest, that a large reason for that underappreciation is the quiet period that resulted from you and the team having to process such vast amounts of data, right? You had multiple, big datasets that you had to work through. 

We now have a completion of the interpretation of the geophysical data from this project. And I would love for you to provide some context, not just on what you learned but the process and why it took quite a bit of time. Although, again, I reckon that's a good problem to have given that most projects suffer from a lack of historical data.

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. And there's lots in that question, Gerardo. And as you said, we've got a project in Nevada, which we've just completed drilling. And we'll be moving to Cora in Arizona, and we'll be drilling that reasonably soon. And the next one off-the-block will be the Sherridon Project in Manitoba. 

Sherridon is quite a well-known, quite famous mining camp in Manitoba, and we're about 70 kilometers north of Flin Flon. And the things that really caught our eye when we first looked at Sherridon were the multiple resource projects that had already been drilled out — so historical resources. And I use the word historical as the 43-101 system requires but these are resources that were calculated in 2010 so they're not, sort of, generations ago. 

We identified historical resources. We identified a project that was an orphaned asset — something that had been forgotten about… and there are good reasons for that. And so we had a dig in, and we saw that it was open to acquire at a very low cost. 

It required a bit of corporate reconstruction from our joint venture partner, which is a company called Halo Resources. And essentially, Halo Resources spent loads of money during 2005 up to about 2011. And then, a clawback was exercised by Hudbay coming back over the top of the project. 

Hudbay executed a good bit of work in that clawback. But then, Hudbay walked away as well in 2013 because of their own internal issues and money to spend. I think it was in South America where they had some other problems. And so by that stage, Halo Resources didn't really exist in its own form and couldn't really take the projects back. And so the projects fell into limbo for about 10 years. 

That's where we stepped in and managed to join the dots and reconstruct the parts to be able to do a transaction. And that took us a while but it delivered us an amazingly good project in a great mining district as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about the exploration upside, right? This is a VHMS type of deposit, which is a past-producing asset. Typically, there are multiple deposits, right; once you find one or two, there tends to be more. Can you speak to what you do now to unlock that discovery potential?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. And the Canadian term or the term that gets used most often with VHMS deposits — VHMS being volcanic hosted massive sulfide — so these styles of deposits occur in what are called “camps.” So if you find one, then it kind of tells you that the process is working to form many of them. 

And so if you look at the Flin Flon belt, for example, which is from Snow Lake on the eastern side across to the project of McIlvenna Bay with Foran Mining on the western side… I'd say 600 kilometers across… there's about a hundred VHMS deposits in that terrain. So small ones, large ones. And really, some cluster together; some are out there by themselves. And it shows that the same process that developed one ore body can repeat itself and develop multiple ore bodies.

And it doesn't need a geology lesson but it's a very great indication when you've drilled massive sulfide to know that there is potential for others around. At our camp in the Sherridon field, the Sheridan camp has about 10 massive sulfide deposits that are known; four of those have historic resources; two of them were large historic mines. 

The opportunity now is to find another one of the large deposits that is hidden both in the ground and in the data. And our opportunity is to unlock the keys to that next deposit, which will be at a deeper level, I think, than the Sherridon camp.

Gerardo Del Real: And just for potential shareholders or newer shareholders maybe that are attracted to the story and the excitement that comes with drilling for discoveries, T2 Metals’ mandate is to focus on copper, nickel, and lithium acquisitions to explore these properties to make discoveries. And you tend to want to do that in jurisdictions that are top-notch. Am I accurate in that, Mark?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. And you know the history of our group and the work that we do, Gerardo, and looking at places where you can get work done in a meaningful timeframe is important to me. 

A copper focus followed by nickel would be the key places that we're looking at. And, really, that's driven by the energy transition. We don't need to dig into that but it creates a whole new range of opportunities for us as explorers and for investors. 

And I think, gradually, as we saw at PDAC, we're seeing a whole new generation of investors coming through who perhaps weren't traditional mining investors. But the opportunity to invest in that EV cycle and that decarbonization really allows those investors to come in and invest with us as mining companies. 

And I think the whole cycle is a very long one. And we'll still be talking about this in 10 or 15 years’ time about the opportunity to decarbonize and the metals that are required to do that. We're in a great position to support that.

Gerardo Del Real: Agreed. Next several quarters, Mark; what's it look like for the company? I know there are a lot of catalysts coming up.

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. We're always on the acquisition hunt so I'll put that one out there as something that we're working on all the time. We have the drill results to come through from Lida and then a follow-up drill program at Lida, which is the project in Nevada. 

We're moving down to Arizona to a porphyry target there, which is looking really good. And so we'll be drilling that in the short-term… so certainly in the first half of this year. And then, rolling across to look at drilling and exploration up at Sherridon. 

We raised flow-through dollars for the Sherridon project, and so we're financed there with good quality flow-through money for that work. 

Gerardo Del Real: Multiple shots for a major discovery, or ‘discoveries,’ I should say, this year. Where's the market cap, Mark?

Mark Saxon: I'll be rounding up to say we're C$15 million so, let's say, C$12 million. So low capex, low market cap company and in good shape for growth.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! Mark, thanks so much. Sounds like we'll be chatting pretty soon.

Mark Saxon: Thanks, Gerardo. Chat soon. Thanks for the call.