CLEAN ENERGY METALS FOR A GREENER WORLD
TSX-V: TWO | OTC: AGLAF
Advancing Multiple Copper-Dominant Projects in Tier-1 Mining Jurisdictions in the US & Canada
Canada-based T2 Metals Corp. (TSX-V: TWO)(OTC: AGLAF) is focused on advancing a portfolio of historical resource and discovery stage copper-dominant projects in favorable mining jurisdictions throughout the United States and Canada to support the green energy transition.
T2’s primary prospects are the flagship Sherridon copper-zinc-gold project in Manitoba, Canada, the Lida copper-silver-gold project in Nevada, and the Cora copper porphyry project in Arizona.
Project Snapshot:
Sherridon Camp: VHMS (Manitoba, 90% earn-in): Sherridon lies in the prolific Flin Flon VHMS (volcanic-hosted massive sulfide) mining camp of northwestern Manitoba, Canada. The flagship project includes multiple historical (2010) resource-stage Cu-Zn-Au deposits, is serviced by all-year road and rail, and is close to operating mines. Manitoba provides access to hydro-electric power enabling less energy intensive mining and processing.
Lida: Porphyry, Skarn (Nevada, 100%-owned): The Walker Lane Mineral Belt of Nevada lays host to numerous porphyry and epithermal deposits rich in copper, gold, and silver. Lida displays many historical oxide copper workings within a siliceous host overlying a large IP chargeability anomaly that is being drill tested for the first time ever.
Cora: Porphyry (Arizona, 100%-owned): Southern Arizona hosts world-class examples of porphyry and skarn copper mineralization. At Cora, T2 Metals has secured a high priority target under shallow cover with thick intervals of copper oxide including 225.5 meters (740ft) at 0.29% Cu from 42.7 meters (California Steel Co., 1956).
A Focus on the Green Energy Transition
The T2 Metals Corp. (“T2”) name reflects the transition to more sustainable sources of energy and the essential role that mining and materials play in the clean energy revolution.
The company’s primary focus is on copper, which — as a highly efficient and cost effective conductor of electricity and heat — is critical to the future of clean energy and mobility worldwide.
Due to the electrification-of-everything, access to secure and sustainable sources of copper has never been more important.
Electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and batteries for energy storage all run on copper.
As a result, copper demand is achieving record levels due to the essential role the red metal plays in the global transition to CO2-free generation & storage of energy.
Put plainly, the clean energy transition cannot happen without new sources of copper.
Demand for copper has grown 2.5% per year on average for the past 40 years. The clean energy transition and electric mobility suggest this demand growth will be sustained or exceeded for many years to come.
A significant part of that escalating demand growth will continue to come from renewable energy sources and electric vehicles (EVs).
Solar and offshore wind systems need 2X and 5X, respectively, more copper per megawatt of installed capacity than power generated using natural gas or coal.
Likewise, EVs and hybrids use anywhere from 40 kg to 85 kg of copper per vehicle, including within batteries and electric motors; that’s 2.5X the copper needed per internal combustion engine vehicle.
And, in just the next decade and a half, the world will be buying more EVs than combustion engine cars as the world seeks to go greener.
A carbon-neutral future will require many millions of batteries, both to power electric vehicles and to store wind and solar power on the grid — all requiring massive amounts of copper.
As a result, the price of the red metal has been gaining steadily since last fall and appears poised for a march toward all-time highs above US$5/lb in the coming quarters.
Copper is the metal of electrification, and electrification is much of what the energy transition is all about.
Unless significant new copper supply becomes readily available through the discovery and mining process, the world’s climate goals will likely be short-circuited and remain out of reach.
T2 Metals — which is led by a seasoned group of mining professionals with decades of combined experience in mineral exploration and discovery — has its collective boots-on-the-ground at multiple copper-dominant exploration projects with plenty of news flow ahead, including drilling, in the coming quarters.
T2 Metals is building a pipeline of North America-based copper-dominant projects with robust discovery potential in mining supportive jurisdictions where permitting can typically be achieved in a timely manner.
Permitting, as everyone in the mining industry knows, can make or break a mineral project, and, thus, it is the company’s mandate to operate only in regions where there’s a history of strong governmental support for mining.
As noted, T2’s flagship is the Sherridon copper-zinc-gold project in Manitoba, Canada. The company is also advancing two high-merit copper projects in the United States: the Lida copper-silver-gold project in Nevada, and the Cora copper porphyry project in Arizona.
All of these projects are nestled securely in Tier-1 mining jurisdictions. Let’s take a look at each project individually.
Sherridon copper-zinc-gold project (90% earn-in):
Manitoba, Canada
The 50 sq km resource-stage Sherridon copper-zinc-gold project is a VHMS-style (volcanic-hosted massive sulfide) property located in the prolific Flin Flon mining camp of northwestern Manitoba, Canada — a Tier-1 mining district.
VHMS-style deposits are some of the largest producers of copper, zinc, and gold, globally, including such world-class deposits as Neves Corvo, Kidd Creek, and the Bathurst camp.
The Flin Flon / Snow Lake VHMS district of western Manitoba & eastern Saskatchewan boasts over 100 years of continuous mining — including more than 60 mines for Cu, Zn, Pb, Ag, and Au.
T2 holds rights to earn-in 90% of twenty-eight Sherridon claims from a private Canadian company by paying C$15,000 cash, issuing 100,000 common shares, and completing C$2 million of exploration investment over 7 years. Halo Resources may fund its 10% interest or will convert to a 1.5% NSR purchasable for C$2 million.
It’s important to note that, 1.) VHMS deposits commonly occur in clusters, or “camps,” and, 2.) T2 Metals is the exclusive owner of the Sherridon camp.
Already, the flagship Sherridon project includes four near-surface historical (2010) resource-stage Cu-Zn-Au deposits — including the Sherrit Gordon Mine; 8 million tonnes of past production — within a 4 km radius and is situated nearby to operating mines.
Mining of the Sherritt Gordon deposit at Sherridon took place between 1931 and 1951, over which time 7.74 million tonnes were mined at an average grade of 2.46% Cu, 2.84% Zn, 0.6 g/t Au, and 33 g/t Ag (Froese & Goetz, 1981).
Subsequent exploration was completed in the region by a range of companies, which identified numerous massive sulphide occurrences typically associated with a similar host-horizon as Sherritt Gordon (Ostry et al, 1998).
T2 Metals reports that ~70% of the historical resources from the 2010 estimate (see table below) are within 100 meters of surface and may be amenable to an open pit mining methodology.
In terms of resource expansion potential, the team at T2 believes that the big, or “mother lode” deposit at Sherridon has yet to be found and that, once uncovered, could perhaps one day rival Hudbay’s 777 Mine (18-year mine life), which represented the pinnacle of a century of shared success for Hudbay and Flin Flon.
Additionally, the four known deposits that make up the Sherridon project appear open along strike and at depth, which could lead to a host of high-priority drill targets going forward.
The company intends to have boots-on-the-ground in that endeavor later this year wherein it also has at its disposal data from more than 400 historical drill holes and tens of kilometers of mineralized horizon defined by airborne geophysics.
Lida copper-silver-gold project (100%-owned):
Walker Lane Belt, Nevada
The Walker Lane Mineral Belt of Nevada lays host to numerous porphyry and epithermal deposits and is considered one of America’s top exploration addresses for copper, gold, silver, and lithium.
T2 Metals’ 100%-owned Lida copper-silver-gold property displays many historic oxide copper workings within a siliceous host overlying a large IP chargeability anomaly (identified in mid-2022) that’s being drill tested for the first time ever.
The top of the anomaly is interpreted to lie at approximately 250 meters of vertical depth.
As part of T2’s ongoing maiden drill program, the company reports that the first two holes have intersected intense silica alteration.
Both drill holes — which were spaced ~900 meters apart — intersected altered and veined sequences of sedimentary rocks with Hole 1 intersecting a porphyritic quartz-feldspar intrusive, which the team believes provides evidence of potential proximity to a larger porphyry that may be a deeper source of the extensive near-surface copper mineralization found at Lida.
Upon visual inspection of the drill core, the T2 team has elected to send core from both holes to the lab for processing and, subsequently, pause drilling until that analysis has been completed.
T2 Metals CEO Mark Saxon — whom you’re about to hear from directly in our exclusive interview — commented via press release:
“Drilling a previously untested project is an exciting time in the exploration industry, and Lida has been no exception. Intersecting a sulfide-bearing porphyry intrusive beneath cover is a very positive result, but the highlight was the silica altered interval with chalcocite associated with high resistivity. Lida sits within the Walker Lane, one of the most gold rich regions of North America, while locally a major gold mining company has staked on our western claim margin. Alteration of this style may be indicative of potential for gold mineralization. We elected to pause the drilling program after two holes to learn more about the intersected rocks using geochemistry and petrology, and we shall return to further test this large and highly prospective target on the basis of that new data.”
And speaking of mining addresses, Nevada consistently ranks near the top of favorable places to mine and was ranked as the #1 mining jurisdiction in the world in the 2020 Fraser Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies — so it really doesn’t get any more prospective for mineral exploration than America’s Silver State.
In terms of the Walker Lane Belt, activity is currently heating up in and around T2 Metals’ claim block with the company noting that a senior producer recently staked mineral claims right along the western edge of its Lida property.
And that’s not at all surprising considering that Nevada’s Walker Lane Mineral Belt is one of the richest mining districts in North America with hundreds of copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum deposits along with activity by senior producers such as AngloGold, Newcrest, Hecla, and Kinross — among others.
The belt, which correlates directly with the infamous San Andreas Fault, has seen continuous mineral exploration and production — highlighted by a number of historically important mines, including the famous Comstock Lode — since the original gold rush of 1849.
T2’s 4.83 sq km Lida copper-silver-gold project — which is considered a high-priority target due to its association of widespread surface copper mineralization with a discrete magnetic high — is situated in a prime Walker Lane hotspot in between the Goldfield Deposits (Centarra Gold) and the Bullfrog Mine (Augusta Gold).
A series of initial ground sampling and IP surveys across Lida, from 2021 to 2022, confirmed a zone of intense copper mineralization and strong hydrothermal alteration within the claim block, producing the first set of drill targets.
As you can tell by Mark Saxon’s quote in the company’s 16 February 2023 press release — and as you’ll undoubtedly pick up on in our exclusive interview coming right up — the T2 team is eagerly awaiting assay results from the first two holes and is poised to resume drilling once that geologic data is in hand.
Cora copper porphyry project (100%-owned):
Southwestern Arizona
Last but not the least, T2 owns 100% of the 3.84 sq km Cora copper porphyry project, which is situated in the south-central Arizona Copper District where it is surrounded by an array of copper porphyry deposits and where historical drilling at Cora has produced thick intersections of oxide copper.
As noted, the T2 Metals team is only interested in projects that are located within the safe confines of Tier-1 mining jurisdictions; Arizona, for example, chimed in at #2 in the Fraser Institute’s 2021 Mining Attractiveness Index.
To that end, speculators can take added comfort knowing T2 is advancing projects in areas with a long established history of strong governmental support for mining operations.
Last summer, T2 completed an airborne magnetic survey at Cora, which identified a clear oval shaped low-magnetic feature — a characteristic commonly found associated with porphyry copper deposits in Arizona and elsewhere.
The magnetic-low feature is interpreted to be approximately 1.5 km by 1.5 km in area and corresponds, in part, with a zone of oxide copper mineralization previously drilled by California Steel Co. way back in the 1950s.
The T2 team believes the magnetic low may correspond with an intrusive ore body, which makes the anomaly a strong copper porphyry-style target. The company plans to drill test the target later this year.
Exclusive Interview with T2 Metals CEO Mark Saxon
Our own Gerardo Del Real of Resource Stock Digest and Junior Resource Monthly caught up with T2 Metals CEO Mark Saxon for a deep dive into the exciting looking drill core just pulled from the ground at Lida in Nevada — plus a look at the company’s flagship Sherridon project in Manitoba and the Cora project in Arizona.
Mr. Saxon has 30 years of experience in exploration and resource geology. After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1991 with a First Class Bachelor of Science (Honors) in geology, Mark has worked with and led major and junior resource companies — including now taking the helm at T2 Metals.
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of T2 Metals — Mr. Mark Saxon.
Mark, I've known you for quite a bit now, well over a decade, and I know you are not the type of CEO that gets excited easily. So when I read the recent release… and let me read the headline really quick. It says:
T2 Metals Intersects Intense Alteration and Porphyritic Dyke in Drilling at the Lida Copper-Silver-Gold Project in Nevada.
When I read the quote, I said, ‘Mark sounds excited!’ And so I'm glad to have you on because I want you to explain — and correct me if I'm wrong if you're not excited — but it sounds like you're really liking what you saw in this initial drilling in the initial two holes.
And obviously, we're waiting to get the numbers on it but at least, rock-wise, it sounds like you're happy with what you got.
Mark Saxon: Hey, Gerardo, and thank you very much for the chance to talk it through. And you're making me sound very old by saying we've known each other for 10 years! We’re very, very pleased to share the results of Lida here.
And, really, the fun part of exploration and geology in mining, one of the very best parts, is putting in those first holes into new projects where you've really literally never seen the rocks before. And Lida is one of those projects that we generated as a first-concept idea. We did some field work, we did some geophysics, and then we started drilling. And so we're now seeing the fruits of those labors, I suppose.
So, absolutely, there's always unexpected things. And this is one of those holes where we drilled and we said, ‘What's that?’ — which we can touch on a little bit further in — but where we're seeing a porphyritic dyke where a porphyry dyke was near the top of the hole and went through some sediments that have the vein style and the alteration style that looks like a distal signature to a porphyry.
Gerardo Del Real: Tell me a bit about what the target was. And, again, we're waiting on results; we're waiting on actual numbers. But tell me what the target was and how you're perceiving it now. And, I should say, now it's ‘targets,’ right?
Mark Saxon: Yeah, and it's a big project. We have multi-kilometers of anomalies in this area, and it's a project that's never been drilled before. The project sits on a regional trend that's called the Walker Lane in Nevada — close to the California border — and well-known for world-class copper deposits. It's well-known for world-class gold and for silver deposits as well in that area.
Beatty, where we based ourselves out of, is a real hub for exploration mining, as is Goldfield, which is the next little town to the north. It's a really well-known district. And we saw this area where it had a lot of copper mineralization at surface sitting in a sandstone, and we thought:
‘That's funny. It's not a normal host for copper. What can we think about in terms of a target style that could underlie that and be the ore body that underlies the smoke at the top?’
So our model that we preferred on that target was a porphyry; a porphyry essentially being a ball-shaped or balloon-shaped intrusion that pushes up through the rock and carries all of the copper. And then, when it cools and fractures, the copper releases into the wall rock and into the sandstone around it.
And so what we've been seeing in the rocks is what we think is the effect of a porphyry intruding and then fracturing and altering the rocks around it as it comes in because you've got a really hot rock coming into cold rocks.
And you can kind of see that in the signature in the rocks when you look at the drill core and you look at the rocks around it. So that's what I think we've been seeing in the rocks here in both drill holes.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. What comes next?
Mark Saxon: Yes, so we’ve drilled two holes. We had prepared pads for a few more. But I think on the basis of what we had seen and, in particular, the rock that we intersected in the bottom of the first hole told us that there are more things that we don't know than we do know — which is always a good thing.
So we decided to hold the program at two holes, and we'll come back with some new thinking and probably some new geophysics to take us into a slightly new location from where we were drilling. But it's a big project with lots going on, and so we've got lots of opportunity there.
Drilling sometime during the middle part of the year is the aim, and, really, they're walk-up drill targets now based on what we've seen already.
Gerardo Del Real: This is shaping up to be a very, very exciting exploration project. To have these types of rocks and this type of signature this early on in the first two holes on an untested property is exceptional.
I would love for you to provide a brief overview of the rest of the portfolio for those that may be new to the T2 Metals story and are really liking this exploration story that's emerging. There's a lot more to T2 than just this project, though, obviously, the focus right now, in the immediate term, is on the results from these first two holes.
Mark Saxon: Absolutely. We're not a one-project company and we're building out a story and our basis. And you know the team I work with, Gerardo; we're very strong on project generation and always looking for those next projects. We're always filling that pipeline, which we're very active on at the moment.
In the portfolio at the moment, we've got a project in Arizona called Cora, which has got lots of great evidence of being a porphyry system. It's about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson right in the heart of the porphyry copper belt of Arizona — a great place to be with lots going on all around us.
And then, our third project is in Manitoba, Canada, which is a resource-stage copper project. This one VHMS-style — volcanic-hosted massive sulfide — in the Flin Flon camp, which is a great mining district.
And Manitoba is a super place to get work done quickly. In fact, we raised a bit of flow-through money in Canada to cover that project, and we'll be seeing some news flow from that coming through in the next 12 or so months.
So I think we have a really good balance between jurisdiction risk and geology risk and commodity risk. I think we're in a great position for the coming year.
Gerardo Del Real: I know you've been meaning to speak in more detail about the Sherridon project and why you're so excited about it. I would love for you to provide the context, and let's talk about what comes next.
Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk a bit first about the history of the project and how we came to be there because it makes a really interesting exploration story. The Sherridon project is about 65 kilometers to the north of Flin Flon in Manitoba.
So the Flin Flon Belt / Snow Lake Belt, together, are a really major mining district that has been in production for about a hundred years. So there are some major mines there. HudBay is, obviously, the big operator in Manitoba.
Sherridon was mined from the 1930s until the 1950s. I'll introduce the resource in a minute. The mine was closed in 1955. It was dormant for a little while but HudBay got involved. HudBay at one point joint ventured into a company called Halo Resources.
Halo did a lot of exploration work. In total, we've got around 400-500 historical drill holes on the project. We called up Halo Resources and we found a way to allow them to do a transaction and came up with a really great deal.
Gerardo Del Real: Tell me about the focus…
Mark Saxon: Sherridon will absolutely be the focus of the company as we move forward. It's a company-making project. It's a good size landholding. It's close to operating mines. It's got existing resources from surface. As I said, it's got almost 500 drill holes on the project already. We've got a massive dataset there to make our decisions on as we go forward.
When you look at the way these camps develop — and you think of Snow Lake itself and you think of the Flin Flon Camp — there were a number of smaller resources on both of those sites. Then, suddenly, deeper exploration, new technologies, and better geophysics… and you can look a little bit deeper. And suddenly, you find the mother lode… you find the really big deposit.
And Sherridon really looks like one of those projects where we've got about 20 million tonnes in historical resources (2010) at the moment. We're in a position now to use all of that data, drill deeper, and find new ideas… find the real mother lode that sits associated with that 20 million tonnes.
Gerardo Del Real: You're starting with a base — and I should mention that this was using US$3/lb copper prices, US$1,000/oz gold prices, and US$1.05/lb zinc prices — but you're starting with a base of, and correct me if I'm wrong, just over 360 million pounds of copper across all categories. You can throw in nearly 500 million pounds of zinc and some gold and silver credits there as well.
[Editor’s note: At present, copper is trading north of US$4/lb, gold is above US$1,800/oz, and zinc is around US$1.40/lb]
What do you feel is the exploration upside knowing that you're already off to a heck of a start given the tiny market cap that the company has right now?
Mark Saxon: The numbers you quoted are correct. And for context, the historical resources are from 2010 and the numbers include indicated and inferred. So yes, that's correct and that's from surface. There were pit designs for open pit mining and underground mining as well.
If we step back and we look at the exploration targets — casting our eye to Snow Lake or to Flin Flon where there are a number of deposits of similar size to the one you've just quoted; sort of that 300M lbs — sitting below those deposits are the really large deposits with much higher grades and really high gold grades, as well, in some of those camps.
So if you look at past production, it was around 8 million tonnes at 2.5% copper and about 3% zinc. These are really great ore-bodies when you find the right one. That, obviously, would be extremely valuable today.
Like you say… the metal prices that were used in these calculations in the historical resources were at least 50% lower than what you would use today, which increases the resource of the project immediately by lowering the cutoff grade. And you can keep the same NPV as the metal prices go up.
So yeah, we're in good shape and ready to go.
Gerardo Del Real: A lot to like for a company with a market cap of just over C$12 million. Looking forward to the forthcoming assays from Lida. Looking forward to having you back on, Mark. Thanks so much for the time.
Mark Saxon: Thanks, Gerardo, and thank you for the support.
The Opportunity
T2 Metals Corp. is advancing multiple historical resource and discovery-stage copper-dominant projects in Tier-1 mining jurisdictions in the US and Canada to support the green energy transition.
The company’s flagship is the Sherridon copper-zinc-gold project in Manitoba, Canada, where it controls the entire Sherridon camp.
You heard directly from CEO Mark Saxon. He says:
Sherridon will absolutely be the focus of the company as we move forward. It's a company-making project. It's a good size landholding. It's close to operating mines. It's got existing resources from surface. As I said, it's got almost 500 drill holes on the project already. We've got a massive dataset there to make our decisions on as we go forward.
T2 is also advancing two high-merit copper-dominant projects in the United States: the Lida copper-silver-gold project in Nevada, and the Cora copper porphyry project in Arizona.
The company plans to have boots-on-the-ground at Sherridon later this year and is currently in the midst of a maiden drill program at Lida where drilling has been paused while core from the first two holes is assayed. T2 also plans to initiate drill testing at the Cora project later in the year.
Also worth noting, the T2 team is perpetually on the hunt for additional accretive acquisitions in other Tier-1 mining jurisdictions. So plenty of near-term catalysts and news flow ahead for T2 over the coming quarters.
For interested speculators, T2 Metals offers exposure to multiple copper-dominant projects in Tier-1 jurisdictions within North America — all at a current sub-C$15 million market cap.
In other words, now is a perfect time to start checking out T2 Metals as it advances its three primary projects.
A great place to start is T2’s corporate website where you can learn more about the properties and the team, view the 2023 corporate presentation, and sign-up to receive updates directly from the company’s IR department.
Also, click here for more of our ongoing coverage of T2 Metals, including additional late-breaking interviews with upper management as developments arise.
T2 Metals Corporation trades on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol TWO and on the US OTC Bulletin Board Exchange under the symbol AGLAF.
For additional information on Vancouver-based T2 Metals, be sure to contact the company’s IR department directly at info@t2metals.com.
— Resource Stock Digest Research