Phoenix Metals Greenlit: 51,500 Metres and Four More Rigs at Greenwood

0:13Nicholas Campbell: Phoenix Metals just announced an amended exploration permit for its Greenwood Copper Gold project in South Central British Columbia, clearing the way to drill the top priority Phoenix target area. The company was awarded a 51 ,500-meter drill contract and already has 10 of 12 holes complete at the Lexicon target with four more rigs en route to accelerate testing. Greenwood is a past-producing mine site. The company was created in partnership with the Soyuz Indian Band, whose traditional territories underlie Greenwood. CEO Nick Campbell is with us to talk through what the permit unlocks. Nicholas, welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

0:51Nicholas Campbell: Hi, Michael. Thank you for having me. Nice. Nick, let's talk about the goals of this drill campaign. The Phoenix target area is the umbrella name for the top priority target, specifically Phoenix South, JD Golden Crown, Phoenix Deep, Bluebell. You have been drilling into Lexington with your current rig. The overarching goal, though, is to find an open, pittable, near-surface bulk tonnage targets, Nick. Yeah, that's correct. And so, I mean, the Phoenix target area is really the highest priority targets that we have in the district. We started drilling at the Lexington target, which in and of itself is a very attractive target that we're drilling off right now.

1:33But we have a permit in mind there, which allowed us to start drilling right away. And so we were waiting for that amended permit, which allows us to drill all of the highest priority targets that we have in the Phoenix project area. And just to remind everyone, the Phoenix area, there was a historic pit on the Phoenix target area that was run from 1956 to 1976. It took out about 27 million tons, creating 0.9 % copper, 1.14 gram per tonne gold. So the first target area we're going to be drilling is going to be the extension of that. That's called Phoenix South. So we've got a 32-hole program that we're launching this month.

2:12We have two rigs that are on site today, and they've just started up drilling. We've got another two rigs that are coming on site by the end of the month. So we're going to have four rigs working on the Phoenix target area. First, starting work at the Phoenix South. After they've completed the 32-hole program there, they'll move on to the JD Golden Crown, which in and of itself is a huge target area, three and a half kilometers long, 500 meters wide. It's actually the area that I'm most excited about in the district. But there are three major target areas that we're drilling off in this phase one program.

2:47That's the Phoenix South, the J.D. Golden Crown, and as we said before, the Lexington target. And so while we were waiting to get this expiration permit, this amendment that allows us to start drilling the Phoenix target area, we have been drilling off on Lexington. Lexington's a massive chalcopyrite target. There's about 170 holes that have been drilled into that historically that we're all looking for high-grade underground resources. But what we're doing is we're looking, we've reinterpreted that historic data, and we're drilling that off also to confirm the high-grade underground resource, but really to also test the thesis that there is an open pitable bulk tonnage target at the Lexington target.

3:27And that's where you're going to see the first set of drill results. So we do have four rigs coming on the site by the end of the month. We'll have five rigs turning in October. and we should have our first results from the Lexington target out sometime likely in early October.

3:45Nicholas Campbell: Just to clarify, Nick, you do have potentially a startup with Lexington, because you just mentioned that right now, because you're able to do the permitting on Lexington. But there was also a previously open pit, which is what you're going to be drilling into for, which would have been a separate operation, which I guess has a lapse permit, correct? Yeah, that's correct. So there's a company called Merit Mining that built a 200-tom per day mining and milling operation. The mining was happening at the Lexington Target. It was an underground mine. There's 2.1 kilometers of underground development in Lexington.

4:24There's a permitted 200-tom per day mill. There's a permitted tailing storage facility. Now, all of those are on care and maintenance. And so in order for us to consider a restart, we need to come up with a plan in terms of how we'll attack that. That's part of the drilling that we're doing at Lexington. And because we already have a permanent mill, because we've already, and that's built on site, we have a permanent tailing storage facility. We have 2.1 kilometers of underground development. These are all massive sum capital that have been put into Lexington and restart. So the incremental cost for us to get a mine up and running is probably quite minimal.

5:02And the fact that we have the support of the Usoas Indian Man is critical for us to be able to potentially expedite a restart of that small scale mining operation. However, right now, the focus is primarily going to be on exploration. And this is a district that we see the potential of hosting anywhere from half a billion to a potentially billion plus tons of pretty good grade copper gold mineralization. But it will also have very high grade structures that we'll drill into. If you're looking at Lexington, the underground resource is averaging six gram gold, 1 % copper. That's pretty good grade material.

5:38At Golden Crown, we do have an underground resource as well. It's about 182 ,000 tons, creating 10 gram per ton of gold and 0.5 % copper. So while we're drilling off these bulk tonnage open pit targets, we also expect to drill into some high grade zones that will either increase the overall average grade of an open pit or potentially be developed into an additional underground mine.

6:02Nicholas Campbell: How is the historical data, Nick? The historical data is in pretty good condition. The core on site isn't in, some of the core on site from the historical drilling isn't in as good a condition, but we do have all the historical callers. We have all the historical asset results, and there's quite a bit of data from historical mining. There's 40 different mining operations that have been developed over time since the 1890s in this district. There's quite a bit of historical mining data. This is part of the benefit of working in a brownfield district. There's a lot more that's guiding your exploration program than your traditional greenfield assets.

6:39So the fact that we have that historical data, it's helped us to drive this exploration program to design this initial phase one drill program, which is a 55 ,000 meter drill program that with the acceleration of our exploration program, we expect to get through that 50 ,000 meter program by this time next year.

6:57Nicholas Campbell: Now, it's mid-September when recording this right now. Any issues in terms of getting the drills set up, accessing the targets that you want to hit? So not really in terms of accessing the targets. There's excellent access, and there's excellent all-season road access connecting us to each target that we're looking at. Of course, there's going to be some additional pad development that you're going to need to do as you do the drill program. The biggest issue that we found was actually just getting drill crews on site. And so and that's why it took us so long to get to award a contract. We wanted to make sure that we were working with a group that could not only just not only mobilize rigs and crews to site, but we're also committed to working with us on a continual basis throughout the winter and into the summer next year.

7:46We found we found that that drill team to work with us. And the nice thing about where we're located is because it's located immediately north of the U.S. border, it's not as cold in the Grand Forks area as it is in other parts of Canada. The average temperature in the wintertime is somewhere between minus five and minus 10. You can run drill rigs all year round there. And so what that means is that once we get set up with our drilling, which is going to happen at the end of the month, there's going to be about a six to eight week turnaround time between getting a steady stream of assay results, because it takes about six weeks to get your assays back from the lab.

8:26So we're starting up the rigs right now, two rigs turning right now. We'll have four rigs turning by the end of the month. We've got the one rig turning in Lexington. But this does set us up to have our first piece of exploration news in October. we'll have another piece of news in November. And then after November, we should have at least one piece of exploration news a month, uh, from then until probably this time next year. Uh,

8:48Nicholas Campbell: so, um, the, um, the immediate results are going to be coming out. That's going to be come from a Lexington where you've had the initial, um, you've had the initial drill running, correct? Correct. Okay. Uh, stepping back then, uh, help us understand right now, because some, it's going to be a fairly big project that you're going to have going on, you're going to have the five drills that are going to be running. You're going to be having the five targets that are going to be going in. If you're talking to investors, Nick, how do you want them when they're getting these numbers? How do you want them to interpret what is going to be going on?

9:22Nicholas Campbell: How do you want them to actually navigate and understand the numbers? So this is a district that we see as having bulk tonnage potential. And so when you're looking at the assay results, and I don't know what the assay results, we're going to see what the drill results come back with but if you're looking at copper gold districts and you can look at this there's a number of different comps that are out there that you can look at you know there's other there's also operating assets like copper mountain which is a pretty good comp because it's also in south uh south central bridge columbia you know that that asset has an average grade around 0.24 percent copper 0.14 gram per ton gold um you've got companies like troilus in that 0.49 gram per ton gold 0.06 percent copper you know as your arizona scenario was acquired um that that was averaging around 0.56 percent copper so look for look to see what kind of grades we get with continuity there's going to be high grade zones that are going to increase the average grade uh whatever holes we hit that's that's that's sort of to be expected you're seeing you see those high grade hits in jd golden grounds where you're getting anywhere from three and a half meters at 435 gram per ton of gold, 2.6 meters of 296, or sorry, 196 gram per ton of gold.

10:34Those are some high grading results, and those are going to help increase the overall grade for what we're looking at for bulk ton of this target. But what we really want to see is continuous mineralization. So anything above 0.2, 0.2, we're pretty happy with. That's around 0.4 % copper equivalent. And if we get stuff that's going to be anywhere from 0.5 to one gram per ton of copper equivalent, We're going to be pretty happy with that. That really does set us up to be a higher grade copper gold district than most of the different districts that we're seeing out there today. And the other thing that really makes us an advantageous target is just the fact that we have such great access and infrastructure.

11:15Most of the copper gold assets that you're seeing put into development don't have the same kind of access that we have. They don't have the same near proximity rail infrastructure. they don't have they're not located 20 minutes away from a town where you so you don't have to build a camp so these are all the kind of things that are really going to attract attention from corporates but for investors you know we're going to put our results we're going to see what those results show uh if we if we can put together some pretty good continuity of mineralization near surface that shows some depth of potential at anywhere above sort of 0.2.2 we're pretty happy and we'll see so we'll see what the results come out at um if we can do that we're going to show some pretty decent scale potential and hopefully we're also going to have some high grade hits that either show the potential to also additionally develop underground development or potentially just add juice up and increase the average rate of an open target nick campbell thank you to speak with mining stock daily thank you for having me the information presented should not be considered investment advice mining stock Daily Yantz affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein.

12:26Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.