General Chat, page-7496

From the strategic review presentation.

Partners are interested in improvements to the heap leach studies?

I don't see banks being interested in heap leach studies, more-so in BFS level financials/risks.

So that leaves mining-style partners? Not sure what that could mean. A large miner coming with an earn-in? Another Alaskan miner? Contribute $x towards PFS/BFS, gain x% of the project?

But a US listing might make that unnecessary, if it's easier to raise funds to go it alone.

So the heap leach work is important for PFS, but maybe for potential partnerships too.


Ore sorting and heap leach will even be tested on RPM ore too. I forget if Valley/South ore was put through sorters in SS2. So we'll have the data to make a decision, to say whether or not heap leach is useful for RPM (sacrificing some recoveries, for CAPEX/OPEX savings - which would normally make more sense with low grade ore).




Funders wanting to see ore sorting proof. To reduce operational risk, I guess.



Korbel being re-assayed. So we have some results to wait for? Assuming they are any good.


3 technologies being tested with our ore (excluding agglomeration). I'd hope at least 1 will pass the test, which should provide an advantage over SS2?




Funny little label in the RPM slide. 356g/t rock chip. I agree that it's interesting though.

There's only 1 hole in that direction, and it hit nothing, but it barely reached very far into that area.

So there's potentially another resource there waiting to be found (North only had a couple of rock chips to start with). But if there's something there, there's at least a break between North and 'North Downhill', as we've had a lot of barren holes on that side. That area may be lowish priority, because even if something good was found, it would be 1+ year behind the other resources, so could not contribute to PFS.

I expect it'll get drilled at some point, but not as a priority in the lead-up to PFS. But the location is not very convenient (for sharing a pad, to drill 2 areas at once) - it would need a dedicated pad, as a pad can't really be placed to test that area and Valley or North at the same time. If placing a pad downhill, it would only be able to test the very deeps of North/Valley. Higher priority would likely be to prove up the existing resources from uphill.

Uphill pad examples:



Why? Because the pits are already forced to strip those uphill areas. Better to prove if there's ore there or not, and at the same time adding some drilling density to the existing resources. But if they want to focus purely on M&I (instead of growing the resources as much), they might re-use the existing pads.


Side note: North Main is somewhat below surface, which makes it reasonable to re-use the pad over the over? Because you can change the drill angles to test around that main high grade zone.

But North Uphill is 'from surface', so if we want to keep growing the 'from surface' part, the pad has to be moved?