From LiveWire article which part is about AUT:AUTECOThe big gold...

From LiveWire article which part is about AUT:

AUTECO

The big gold producers of the ASX – Newcrest, Northern Star and Evolution – have all reported pleasing progress in turning their recent North American acquisitions into Tier 1 operations, eventually.

But if the measure of success from a push into North American gold is to be measured by the speed of a major value uplift for shareholders, Auteco (AUT) has no peer.

Earlier this year, it picked up the high-grade Pickle Crow project in Ontario for a buy-in and earn-in price of $13m for an 80% stake, with the knock-down price reflecting the Canadian market’s marijuana-induced stupor to gold’s bull run.

Pickle Crow produced 1.5 million ounces of gold at 16g/t from 1925 to its closure in 1966 when the gold price was all of $US35 an ounce. Then it went into a deep sleep until a Canadian company arrived in more recent times and worked up a 1.2m ounce resource at 4.5-5g/t before getting distracted by another project.

Auteco combed through the data and was able to convert the foreign resource estimate into an ASX-compliant inferred resource of 830,000 ounces at an impressive 11.6g/t. What was a minnow at the start of the year is now a $274m company (at 18c a share).

If you are thinking there are some parallels with another recent high-grade success story on the ASX, you’re right.

Auteco is dubbed by many as Bellevue Mark 2, a reference to the success Bellevue Gold has had at its namesake project in WA. Bellevue was a high-grade producer but was abandoned in the 1990s when mining got to a fault and it was assumed there was nothing to be had beyond.

But a rethink a couple of years back that the fault was likely a pre-mineralisation event has since led to the discovery of a growing 2.2Moz inferred resource of high-grade gold. The Bellevue success has prompted a search for the next high-grade “sleeper”.

Recognising that WA was getting a bit crowded for such opportunities, Auteco’s executive chairman Ray Shorrocks went looking elsewhere, ending up at Pickle Crow.

Shorrocks was Bellevue’s chairman until August last year, while Bellevue’s managing director Steve Parsons is a non-executive director of Auteco.

Auteco has a way to go before matching the Bellevue story. But after a recent $30.4m capital raising, the company has two rigs at Pickle Crow whirring away and another on its way to pin down the upside.

A resource update is due by the end of the year and there is good reason to think the 1Moz threshold will be passed with ease, with upside potential to build Pickle Crow to “multi” million ounce status over time