Categories: Precious Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: Gold Stocks / Copper Stocks

T2 Metals (TSX-V: TWO)(OTC: TWOSF) CEO Mark Saxon on 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate at the Sherridon Copper-Zinc-Gold-Silver Project, Manitoba, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of T2 Metals (TSX-V: TWO)(OTC: TWOSF), and what I think is going to be a T2 Metals that has one of the most compelling exploration stories in the second half of this year. But I'm talking with Mr. Mark Saxon from T2. How are you, Mark?

Mark Saxon: Hello, good afternoon. Good to talk as always, and yeah, doing well. So if I'm a bit croaky, I've been doing a few phone calls today. But yeah, things are good.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen. As I mentioned, I'm extremely excited about drilling here in the second half of this year. You have some very, very prospective projects that you recently optioned from someone that everybody in the space knows, and that's enough to me to justify the current market cap that T2 commands. You just put out a 43-101 resource estimate on the Sherridon copper-zinc-gold-silver project in Manitoba, at a time where copper is hitting brand new all-time highs. Gold looks like it wants to run towards $5,000 again. Congrats on the resource. I don't think you're getting any credit for the resource that you just put out.

Mark Saxon: Yeah, I'd agree with that, Gerardo. And I guess it's been, it was our flagship so this is the Sherridon project in Manitoba you were talking about with the recent press release. And, we'll go into depth in a moment, but I guess as you've been saying there, we're a company of two halves, and we've got our gold and silver projects in Yukon, which came from Shawn Ryan. Yeah, great guy, fabulous prospect, 10 times more successful than most prospectors in Canada, who's made major discovery. So we've got those projects in the Yukon.

Balancing that, we've got our copper assets in Manitoba. And, the Manitoba ones we've owned for about four years. We've done drilling ourselves, we've done quite a bit of work on the social side, and infrastructure development, and support there. But we've also been doing a bit of the drilling and we've been doing the work in Sherridon, and just got to the point now where we could publish a 43-101 resource. And amazing timing, we couldn't have done better if we tried, dropping the resource in a really hot copper market. And this is a very major copper project in the prairies. And I suppose if you need a comparative of projects, then we can look at McIlvenna Bay, which was Foran Mining, recently taken over by Eldorado, booked for $3.5 billion Canadian, and so yeah, supersized transaction.

The deposit that we're working on at Sherridon is the same geology, similar grades, it starts at surface. Yeah, it's been a really amazing project for us and we can dig into the details and the numbers on the press release.

Gerardo Del Real: No, let's get into it. Look, the project contains 86 million pounds of copper, 96,000 ounces of gold in the indicated category. But, it's 430 million pounds of copper, and 158,000 ounces of gold in the inferred category. Can you speak to the potential upside in the project? It's already, as you mentioned, a very, very substantial project that I'm sure is gaining a lot of attention from mid-tiers and majors alike. But, can you speak to the resource and the potential upside there for somebody that might want to come in and potentially partner with you, or take it out, right?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. And these projects are ones that are targeted by major companies. And if we look at the belt we're sitting in, so we're in the Flin Flon Belts of Manitoba Saskatchewan. So it's a 100-year-old mining belt, and in fact the mines in Flin Flon itself were operated for over 100 years, which we're only 65 kilometers from there. 65 kilometers in the other direction is the Snow Lake Mine of Hudbay, which is an amazing copper and gold mine producing a billion dollars of free cashflow a year. We sit in between the two in a really great location.

These deposits are what we call polymetallic. So they're copper, they're gold, they're zinc, and they're silver. So when you mine, you take all of them, and that means these projects are very good balancing across markets. Because if copper's up and zinc is down, if zinc is up and copper's down, or gold or precious metals, whatever, it gives you an option everywhere. So that's why these things are very attractive.

For Sherridon now, as you said, we have 10 million tonnes at 1% copper equivalent, 18 million tonnes that was indicated. Inferred 18 million tonnes at 1.7% copper equivalent. So, great grades, a lot of the tonnes, more than 30% of the tonnes are in the indicated category, which says we've got lots of drilling and lots of data, which is about 600-odd drill holes, a very well-known project. And all of these projects start from surface. And I suppose that's important on a mining sense, but it's also important on an exploration sense, because we don't need to drill deep, we don't need to have kilometer holes trying to find new mineralization. Everything has been in that top 200 meter slice of the earth, so all close to surface, But that's less the opportunity as well for deeper targets, and bigger ore bodies, and more mineralization and extensions of depth, which is still completely open and completely untested. And certainly our work as T2, we managed to find down-dip, down-plunge extensions of the ore bodies and add tonnes in that regard.

More drilling is absolutely going to find more as we draw further down-dip and down-plunge on these deposits. So yeah. Very good resource, very good exploration potential, and everything else in the project works really well, so we can touch on that too.

Gerardo Del Real: No, let's get into it. I got to ask you because it's so important right now, geopolitically, the social license and relations with local stakeholders. How are things on that front?

Mark Saxon: Yeah. And I guess when I talk about everything else working really well, and I'm sorry I needed to take a drink there, I'm losing my voice. But, the other things that are incredibly positive for the project are, first of all, Manitoba. Manitoba is a very good province to be working in. A good part of the work that we did in the resource calculation was paid for by the Manitoba Mineral Development Fund, which is government funding to support companies like ours to get work done and try to attract investment in the province. So that's a big tick.

The next big one that we have at Sherridon is existing infrastructure. So, Sherridon was a very substantial past mine. It produced about eight million tonnes at 2.8% copper. So very good mining history in two mines. That mining history means there's infrastructure onsite already. So there's roads, there's an operating rail line, which is owned by First Nations Consortium. There's power onsite, and there's a small village with skilled workers who are already doing lots of things in the exploration of mining industry. So that part's been taken care of. So yeah, we can put a ton of ore on a train line in Sherridon pretty much tomorrow, and get that throughout to Flin Flon within a day, and without any kind of supporting infrastructure.

But I guess the part that we've really done well on working with, is learning how to work with the First Nations Group in that region. And so our First Nations Group that we are particularly involved with is called the Kiciwapa Cree Nation. That group is, they’re friends, they’re partners, everything we do in that region we do in collaboration and discussion, and that has been an excellent relationship and the Kiciwapa are pushing us to move faster, and pushing us to develop, pushing us to find ways to invest in the region and bring jobs for their community and to bring their community back together.

And it's been the best working relationship I've ever had with a First Nations Group. And as I say, they're great friends, and yeah, we hope for success obviously for all our shareholders, and we hope for success for our rights holders as well to make sure that the community benefits from the work we're doing.

Gerardo Del Real: That's got to be really, really appealing for potential suitors that may be looking to do something with the project, I imagine, Mark.

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. It makes our life easy and people are, concerned is the wrong word, but people are mindful that doing indigenous agreements, First Nations agreements can take some time. T2 Metals was the first company in Manitoba to sign an exploration agreement with a First Nations Group, which surprised me at the time when we signed it. For me, coming from other places, it was a pretty standard thing to do, but yeah, we signed that agreement. And now that's been copied by Hudbay, and Kinross, and other companies that are working in Manitoba have copied our version of the exploration agreement. So, very happy to be trailblazers like that and find ways to compensate First Nations and bring them along with the benefits. And so yeah, we're going to see no impediments as we move forward.

The First Nations, the Kiciwapa Cree Nation will have already spoken to government on our behalf to say, "Yeah, look, we want this investment, we want this going ahead," and helping us find ways to make sure we get fast-tracked. So yeah, we're very positive and very fortunate in that regard.

Gerardo Del Real: I mentioned the very highly prospective gold, and silver, and precious metals projects that you recently worked into the portfolio through the relationship with Shawn Ryan. Can you speak to what that looks like in the second half of this year in Future Catalyst there?

Mark Saxon: Absolutely. And that's going to be a very busy place for us in the next five or six months as we run through that northern summer. So, we've built a team. We've got a really good work program laid out in front of us. So we've got additional soil sampling programs, we've got some geophysics lined up. We've got some shallow drilling, REV drilling lined up quite soon, and then we'll be rolling across into diamond drilling at the back end of summer. So yeah, we've got the team in place there, and importantly, we've got the money in place as well. We've done a recent financing with some great shareholders coming in, a strategic shareholder included. And so at the moment, we've got over $8 million in the bank, which is great for our scale of business, and gets us through that season comfortably and will see us generating lots and lots of good news flow both at Sherridon and at the Yukon projects as well.

Gerardo Del Real: It's going to be an exciting, exciting second half of the year. Again, your market cap is minuscule on just the projects that you recently optioned, and now you have over half a billion pounds of copper between all categories there. A lot, a lot of value in this environment where I see copper headed higher, gold headed higher, silver headed higher. Timing is beautiful. Great work, sir. Congratulations. Anything to add to that, Mark?

Mark Saxon: No, just direct people to go and read the press release, and see the disclaimers and things on how we calculate some of those tonnages and copper equivalents and things. But beyond that, it's been a great project, and we're very fortunate to own it. So yeah, we have 100% of an excellent project there in Manitoba. So yeah, the future is ours. We can direct where we go, we don't have any payments or anything that are outstanding, so we're in great shape.

Gerardo Del Real: Mark, thanks for the time as always. Appreciate it, chat soon.

Mark Saxon: Thanks, Gerardo. All right. Cheers, mate. Bye.

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