Introduction to North Arrow Minerals

0:18John Armstrong: All right, everybody, welcome back in to Mining Stock Daily and actually for the first time ever covering and reporting from the New Orleans Investment Conference here this week in the great city of New York. of New Orleans. We have just been all around here the last couple of weeks. First time ever attending this. And so actually, we're going to start things off with a corporate introduction. Happy to welcome in Mr. John Armstrong, the president of North Arrow Minerals. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with the symbol NAR and on the OTCQB with NHAWF. So good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

0:55Well, thanks, Trevor. It's nice to be in New Orleans. It's my My first time here myself. Oh, so it's the first time for the both of us.

1:00John Armstrong: Have you taken in the city? Have you been to New Orleans before? No, I have not been to New Orleans before, and I haven't really had a chance to see anything in the city yet, so I'm looking forward to that part of it. Well, make sure you do that. Make sure you do that, because it is a fact. There's no other city in the world quite like New Orleans, I'm going to tell you that. But listen, this is really more of an introductional conversation about North Arrow. It's gone through kind of a transformation here the last couple of years, But give us that general introduction, that 30 ,000-foot view of the company and what you're working on.

1:31Sure. Well, North Arrow has gone through a transition over the last couple of years, you're correct. And now it's focused on gold exploration in southern Africa and southern Botswana to be specific. We feel that that part of the world is underexplored for gold and that there's a lot of potential there. We're working on the Krypan Gold Project. It's basically a greenstone belt that is poorly explored in southern Botswana. and the deal that was done just over two years ago brought into the company an opportunity to turn up to 80 % in these prospecting licenses by doing a certain set of expenditures in that and the team behind North Arrow has a lot of experience in country in Botswana with Ira Thomas as the CEO.

2:15She was one of the founders of Lucara Diamond Corp. I worked for Ira at Lucara for about 11 years at Crowey Diamond Mine in northern Botswana So we have a lot of in-country experience in Botswana. Our partners on the project have lots of in-country experience. This is basically their backyard rock man resources, and the people there are from the mineral services group. So we've got a lot of in-country expertise, a lot of time spent in Botswana. We're very comfortable with the jurisdiction. And what we've done over the last 24 months is really move it quite quickly through kind of the conceptual stage, through doing some high-resolution magnetic surveys with fixed-wing drones to see through sand cover, identified a number of areas that were prospective for drilling, did some regional drilling, identified six targets.

3:04We've taken those six targets, expanded it to now another, I guess it's 15 targets in total, three of which we've done some shallow RC drilling on and one of which is really showing some quite some promise. So it's moved quite quickly over the last 24 months.

3:19John Armstrong: All right. Well, before we kind of dive into a niche, I do want to talk to you about Botswana because it too has kind of gone through this mining research. I mean, obviously, well known for its diamond exploration and mining in the past. Copper has definitely had a huge impact in country there for the last 10 years or so. That's been something. But the gold exploration in mining is somewhat, I mean, it seems like it doesn't have much precedent as the diamonds and the copper anymore. But is that something that's still kind of early days here for that sector? It's not early days for gold in Botswana.

3:54Gold has been mined in Botswana since the early 1800s, into the 1850s, up in the northeastern part of the country. There's a lot of historic workings up there, and there's some historical gold mines in the northeastern part of the country. So gold has a long history in Botswana. But yes, that was all overtaken by the discovery of diamonds and the development of the diamond mines, which I've seen some difficulties over the last couple of years, which are well spoken about in the media and elsewhere. And so this Krypan Greenstone Belt in southern Botswana, further south in South Africa, there's a mine that's been operating for 30 years.

4:30It's called the Cal Gold Mine. It's run by Harmony Gold. And our project sits on that, basically the strike extent of that Greenstone Belt up into Botswana. We have about 60 kilometers under prospecting license. And that area in Botswana has seen very little gold exploration. Limited work in the late 1990s, mid-2000s, and that's about it. So it's basically, in our view, like I said earlier, it's under-explored. It's been under-evaluated. Modern techniques haven't been thrown at it. And that's sort of our goal is to go in there and take that approach. and yeah when you look at Botswana in terms of its prospectivity for metals it's huge.

5:14The issue is you have some sand cover which is the Kalahari sand and then we talk about how we'd like to explore through it but you know really with the exception of a few deposits the diamond mines were found undercover the copper belt ones have been found undercover so people know how to explore in Botswana undercover and you know we're looking at a greenstone belt in the in the in the Kapfal Kraton. It's a highly prolific producer of metals to the south of us in South Africa. The geology doesn't stop at the border.

5:42John Armstrong: How does that decade of diamond mining and exploration transfer to gold exploration in Botswana? I think that some of the techniques that we're using with these fixed-wing drone technology is really high-resolution mag was developed for diamond exploration. Some of the soil sampling techniques were developed for diamond exploration, and those are easily transmitted to gold exploration. And I know people have sort of said they've looked at someone like myself, and I joined North Arrow to do gold exploration, and they know my history in the diamond world, but then I remind them that my academic career, and the first part of my working career was actually in Archean Gold in northern Canada, working underground at the combine in Yellowknife, and in Red Lake at the Campbell Mine, and I studied the rocks at the combine as part of my doctorate thesis.

6:36So I grew up in gold and went over to diamonds, and now I'm back to gold. Do you miss diamonds at all? There are certain aspects of it that I do miss, 100%, but I'm really excited about this opportunity, right? Good answer.

6:49John Armstrong: All right, let's kind of dive into Cripon here because it's really interesting. You mentioned the Greenstone Belt where it's located, and obviously there's probably a lot of analogies obviously because rocks don't know borders of what was being explored in South Africa but so what it would be like what where are you at right here and what does like a meaningful discovery at Cripon really entail? So I think what I'll do Trevor is I'll circle back to the analogy which is the surge is CalGold. It's been in production for 30 years. Basically, it's a banded iron formation hosted gold deposit. The rocks are a little bit different than what some people would anticipate around banded iron formation hosted gold if they're used to Canadian examples or some examples elsewhere in southern Africa.

7:37It's a low metamorphic grade setting. This is the descriptions of the mineralization from Cal Gold. There's some technical work and there's some literature, like there's some scientific papers on it so we have an idea of what the style of mineralization looks like there you know there's very little in terms of pathfinder elements it's not got a big arsenic signature or anything anything of that nature and it's fairly simple in its uh in its mineralogy it's pyrite and gold and a few other minerals so from a mineralogical point of view and therefore a metallurgical point of view it's a pretty straightforward uh operation the in that But those rocks continue up into Botswana.

8:18And like I said, we have the high-resolution magnetic data. We do have outcrop that we can go and look at on the property. And it goes undercover about 40 kilometers north of the border. You start to get under sand cover. So we've seen the mineralization at surface. We can map it. We can sample it. We have an idea. We're starting to get a better idea of what is mineralized. We've gone to the areas where there's the historical work done. some limited shallow drilling. We've replicated some of that surface sampling and we've replicated some of the drilling. And we've identified areas through regional work where we've gone and done like regional fences of RC holes through fairly shallow sand cover and now gone back and done angled RC holes.

9:03So what makes something significant? We'll go back to CalGold. Their cutoff grade is 0.58 grams per ton for their mineral resource as published by Harmony. The recovered grade last year was 0.78 grams per tonne. So we're looking at a low-grade, high-tonnage type of target. And the drilling that we've done at, we're calling it Target AE, and then we've decided now it's not a target anymore, it's a discovery. So now we call it Tzlo, which means elephant in Setswana, which is the local dialect. And there we have an intersection of 27 metres of 1.1 gram. We drilled 260 meters of strike length with eight shallow RC holes.

9:43Each of those holes intersected gold mineralization and altered and coarse-veined banded iron formation and fruginous chert, so similar to Calgold. And six of those holes returned half a gram or better over widths of over 15 meters. So to my mind, that's what we were looking for, and that's what we've identified at TLO. We've now done some follow-up RC drilling to kind of extend that. The idea from surface sampling was to extend the strike length to up to over 700 meters. We've completed that drill program and we're waiting for some results. But visually, we can see that mineralization on surface.

10:20So now we've taken something and now we have potentially up to 700 meters of strike length with appreciable widths and grades which are comparable to Calvo.

10:28John Armstrong: Are you beginning to see evidence of a larger kind of connected mineralized zones to make one big kind of bulk type of area, potentially? Potentially. So the areas that we've looked in, which were formerly Target A, which is now called, we're going to call Tau, to something called Enkwe, which is formerly AF, up to Tlo, is about 9 kilometers in strike length. Okay. Or, pardon me, 7 kilometers in strike length. So we have three specific areas along those 7 kilometers where we have mineralization. And, you know, at NQA, there's about 450 meters of strike length. We've drilled along that in April and May of this year.

11:14And 19 of the 20 holes intersected gold mineralization and altered band and iron formation. And further to the north, which is AE, which we now call, sorry about this part of it, because we're trying to get the names again. Tlo, where we have 260 meters that we drilled in April. And like I said, now we feel we're going to be able to extend that strike length up to 700 meters. So I think now we're starting to put together a couple of different zones with some strike lengths that will approach what the open pits look like down at Cal Gold. and we have some areas to the north of Tlo, about two kilometers to the north that we call AN, and even further north under some sand cover where we have indications from surface sampling and some shallow vertical RC drilling that there's some mineralized iron formation there.

12:06So we're starting to string them together, and I think what we need, given that the target is a number of these domains that come through with those widths of an excess of 15 meters and with some interesting numbers, it's all shallow, it's all near surface, basically at the one target, there's minimal overburden. So it's not like we're under, I mean, we talk about sand cover, but these discoveries are not under thick sand cover.

12:31John Armstrong: Well, yeah, I was going to ask you, like, give us kind of a sense of just how deep that sand cover really talks about. And does that create its own separate set of challenges and exploration? But from the sounds of it, it's not, it's pretty minimal. At SLO, basically, there's, when we put out our next press release, you'll see there's like zero overburden. and the intersections that we've done, like it's all shallow inclined RC drilling so far, are about 25 meters or so vertical below surface. And we'll have one test at about 100 meters below surface. Okay. But there, the sand cover is minimal.

13:03It's not an issue. Like I said, we can go, we can see the mineralization, we can sample it at surface, we can map it. So it's, you know, as we go further north, sand will become a little more of an issue. But again, at AM and AH, there's about 20 meters of sand. So it's not insurmountable.

13:20John Armstrong: Okay. Let's talk about capital allocation. You guys did raise$4 million earlier this year. So you got some cash to work with. That's great. But as an explorer with multiple targets and new ground, how do you balance the new target ideas with working with what you already know based on prior success and managing that$4 million as long as it can go? So that$4 million basically has got us to this point in the year in terms of doing four rotations of drilling. We will need to raise additional funds at some point in the near future. Everybody's kind of aware of that. To earn our 60 % in the project and become an operator, we need to spend$5 million by the end of June of 2027.

14:10And we're well spent on that. We'll have in 2027 about$700 ,000 left to spend to get to the$5 million and become operator of the project. So that's sort of our goal is to get us to that point. And we will need to do some additional drilling and some more surface sampling. We haven't done any core drilling yet. So that's a priority to do some core drilling on some of these targets. And based on the drilling that we did in June, we've identified two areas where we have some interesting numbers. you know beneath about 20 meters of sand so we need to develop a plan on how to go and drill that and it's given us encouragement that you know our idea around the model and some of the orientations of the banded iron formation with some other structural elements to guide some additional drilling so I think it's having you know having an in like a pipeline of these projects or projects but of target areas is quite helpful yeah and the allocation will be, you know, at SLO, there is really, you know, promising indications there.

15:13And that would be an obvious place to go do some core drilling and some more of the RC drilling to use the RC to extend strike and come in with the core rig to do, you know, get a better understanding of some of the structural orientations and things of that nature.

15:25John Armstrong: Can you break down the, is it an earn-in agreement or an option agreement? It's an option agreement. Okay. So it was... And who's it with is with a group called rockman resources okay thank you which is a private company and the the backers of that are basically it's a series of individuals who are also involved in the mineral services group okay based out of cape town who both i and i have worked with for many years you've had a relationship relationship with it for many years so it's this is the first time we've worked together in this in this type of uh type of situation which is something that we've you know wanted to do for a long time and now we have the opportunity to do it so that's also kind of exciting to have that team behind us as well.

16:04John Armstrong: Can you option a whole 100 % of the project or up to how much? We can get up to 80%. 80%. So after the 60%, we can either go into a joint venture, a 40-60 joint venture, or there's something called the PEA option where a rock man can say, we'd like a PEA, and that will get North Arrow to 80%. Okay, very good. I'm going to let you go, but what else have I neglected to ask that I probably should for people who are, this is their first time being exposed to North Arrow? I think that, you know, I think what people should remember about North Arrow is that what we've done in Botswana, we have a history in Botswana in terms of working there.

16:45We're quite comfortable working there. Botswana has got, you know, it's one of the highest ranked mining jurisdictions in the world. The team behind North Arrow is strong. It's a track record of making discoveries and delivering for people and moving projects forward between you can go back to the discovery of Dyevik, you have Coffee in there, you have Lucara in there. So there's a series. So that sits in the background behind the people within the company. We've got a strong shareholder base. We have a great project, 60 kilometers of strike length of this Greenstone Belt. We've made discoveries.

17:22We're moving as quickly as we can through those. we've got a strong technical team behind us with the support from rockman and the ms group access to technology good mining jurors pardon me good mining jurisdiction so those are the things that are there and i think that you know the thesis that we had going in we're starting to

17:41John Armstrong: we're starting to prove that yeah i would say saying it's one of the best mining jurisdictions is a little bit soft i think it is up there it's probably top three and botswana is amazing to work but they've never heard any complaints and it's like the the project is the other thing is access it's two two and a half hour drive from the capital permitting is easy workforce is easy they're highly educated people they know what to do like it's just and i i don't have to tell you you've been there for many years but i mean it's just a great place when i got it when i approached me and sort of started planting this planting the bug in my ear and everything and then she goes You get to go back to Botswana, right?

18:21I'm like, okay, all right, let's go. That's awesome.

18:23John Armstrong: Okay. All right, John, thanks so much. All right, Trevor, thank you. That's your introduction to North Arrow Minerals, everybody. They do trade on the venture with the symbol NAR and on the OTCQB with NHAWF. And that is our first one of a list of other interviews coming down here from the New Orleans Investment Conference. So stay tuned. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining Stock Daily Yen's affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.