Carlyle Commodities Corp (CSE:CCC, OTCQB:CCCFF) chief executive, Morgan Good, spoke with Proactive's mining analyst, Dr Ryan Long, about the company's plans to expand the Newton Gold-Silver Project in British Columbia.
The asset, which currently has a resource base of 900,000 ounces (oz), is 180km southeast of the Blackwater Gold-Silver Project, which has a resource base of 11.7mln oz and is geologically similar to Newton.
Leveraging previous investment
Carlyle is leveraging the previous operator's historic exploration spend of over C$25mln, including 32,000 meters of drilling, which is almost ten times the company's market cap.
Carlyle has already produced a maiden mineral resource estimate of 861,400 oz of gold and 4.7mln oz of silver at a grade of 0.63 grams per tonne (G/t) gold and 3.43 G/t silver.
The company can further expand its resource base in a cost-effective manner by utilizing the large amount of historic drilling data outside the current resource base.
Exploration potential
The previous owners of the project estimated the resource base to be 1.6mln oz of gold using data that lies outside of Newton’s resource base, indicating that there is potential for resource growth beyond the current base.
An induced polarization (IP) anomaly at Newton covers an area of 4km by 2km with a coincident gold-in-soil anomaly that covers an area of 2km by 1.5km.
This is comparable to the Blackwater Project's IP anomaly, which covers an area of 1.25km by 0.7km, and coincident gold, silver, and zinc soil anomaly, which covers an area of 2km by 1.25 km.
Blackwater has a measured and indicated mineral resource estimate of 11.7mln oz gold and 122.4mln oz silver at a grade of 0.61 G/t gold and 6.4 G/t silver.
Valuation upside
While the Blackwater Project's resource base is currently around 12.5 times the size of Newton's, Carlyle Commodities has a market valuation that is 278 times smaller than Artemis Gold, the owner of Blackwater.
This highlights the significant potential for value appreciation as Carlyle expands the resource base at Newton.
The company is expected to commence a phase II drill program for resource expansion this spring.