Tocvan’s El Mesquite Discovery Grows as Grand Pilar Pilot Mine Nears First Production

0:15Welcome back to Mining Stock Daily. Ian Wagner here with a corporate update from our friends at Tuck Van Ventures. Tuck Van is a gold and silver explorer in Sonora, Mexico, with its flagship Grand Pilar Gold Silver Project. They trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol TOC and on the OTCQB under the symbol TCVNF. We have covered the Tuck Van story for a while now. So any new listeners, I would encourage you to go back to listen to past episodes where Chris and his team lay out all the progress and steps and hard work that have happened there. We have with us today Mr. Christopher Gordon, Chief Executive Officer of Tuck Van Ventures.

0:57Last time we spoke with Chris was in late August, and we discussed the El Mesquite discovery, the maiden resource, path to a pilot mine. Since then, TalkFan has reported more drilling at El Mesquite and initial trench results from Grand Pillar. Chris, great to see you. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks, sir. Have me in. It's good to get caught up. Yeah, I know you've been doing a lot of travel, and obviously conference season is in full swing. um let's let's maybe start with el mesquite right you know you know a lot of big holes that have come there you guys have been drilling there um this is outside of your main zone this is in that south block of grand pilar i'll let you fill in the details but you know some pretty significant holes there 107 meters of you know half a gram per ton goal within a 270 meter envelope maybe you just break down what you guys have been drilling there, what you've been seeing and why it's significant?

1:56Sure. You have to just simply see some of those recent holes we've hit where, you know, we've hit 215 meters of 0.6 gram. And then as you referenced, there's been some other wide intercepts on a few other holes that are at a half a gram. And then up in the north portion of Mesquite, you know, one of the earlier holes was, you know i think over 235 meters of around 0.10 which you know right now when you look at the cutoff that's being used down in sonora and other parts of mexico for heat bleach projects you're you're talking about 0.10 to 0.15 so these are substantial holes and and you know what really excites me about this as well as you know up until the last sort of 10 12 months the only drilling had been done on the main zone, which, you know, that was the original land package.

2:45It's about one square kilometer where we think we've got about 400 ,000 ounces of near-surface material. And, you know, we can talk to the expansion potential there more in a few minutes. But El Mesquite, and to have that type of success and make a discovery that significant in your first 10 ,000 meters of drilling into, you know, untouched ground in terms of the drill rig exploration is very encouraging. and you know i think we were talking about this um just before we started the interview you know i started back in late august of last year so i've been here now for about 14 months and when i started you know we had the main zone that we just talked about and and really felt from you know the soil grid and the rock sampling and then the geophysics that we got flown late last year in the south walk, that that was something that always had the potential to bring up the one and a half to two million ounces if we had reasonable success testing all the multiple targets in that area that we hadn't gone into.

3:48So now to see El Mesquite, which is 1.6 kilometers step out from the main zone, and it's about 1.4 kilometers long, you know, it's twice as big physically as the main zone. and we feel that this is going to be bigger than the main zone you know and the main zone i mean we might as well talk about that right now you know we haven't really been working there the last year and a half two years because we wanted to get rid of the jv partner so that was something we were able to accomplish earlier this year and now that's 100 percent ours so there's some targets inside that one square kilometer that we want to get after and drill.

4:28And we think by stepping outside of that sort of envelope, that one square kilometer to the south, generally speaking, those targets and the structures carry on that way. We think it has the potential to be, you know, 800 ,000 ounces to a million ounces by just sort of expanding that boundary a bit and also testing some of the high priority targets we've left behind because we didn't want to add value until we got rid of the JV partner. So now all of a sudden you're looking at El Mesquite, which is much larger. And with these wide intercepts we're having, we think again, that'll be larger. So now, you know, in the next sort of 12 to 18 months of continued drilling, you're looking at what we think is going to be in and around one and a half to 2 million ounces between just those two.

5:15And now we've got all of the area in the eastern portion of the south block that we call Bioraquez, which we got some of the rock samples back from that that have generated some substantial targets. There's still a host of other targets in the south block, sort of when you're generally talking about east of, or pardon me, west of the El Mesquite and in between that and sort of the main zone. So still tons to go after down there. And I'm kind of rambling here, but yeah, we're obviously pretty excited about the El Mesquite discovery and the potential that we're seeing there. Yeah. And I think what stood out to me a lot about that is that, you know, whether or not it's hole 172, hole 175, 155, you know, which was the discovery hole, like these are near surface, right?

6:07in just very close, very close to surface, which is exciting. And I think to your point, you're looking at that, just that south zone, right? Not the main zone, but that full land package, 3 ,500 meters by about 2 ,000 meters. And you've got main zone, you've got El Mesquite and then Borges. So I guess just to bring us kind of current on that, what's being drilled? So what else, what assays are pending and what else are you drilling guys right now? And then kind of how are you going to attack this, these things? Because you have plenty of targets. Yeah, we're about 13 ,000 meters into the 20 ,000 meter program.

6:50And we've been typically running, you know, trying to run two drills throughout the year so far. And sometimes it's just been one drill. And that's been based on drill availability, obviously, last year in Q4. and then into Q1 this year, everyone got financed and everyone got aggressive with the drill. So right now, you know, the focus is continuing to drill at El Mesquite so we can get a better sense of understanding the structure there and look to see what the continuity is like there. You know, certainly within those sort of three bigger holes that are all relatively close to one another, you know we've been having some calls with some big funds lately we're starting to get introduced to some bigger investors which is nice and and you know some of the numbers we're hearing from those groups is is um is fairly fairly substantial you know we've obviously looked at what we think those type of holes could provide um internally and and maybe it's a bit early to sort of talk about that right now but we're seeing some good size on that so for us yeah continuing to drill at El Mesquite.

7:59And we've got another drill, a second drill that should be coming back to us quite quickly here. And we also, again, want to make sure we're drilling at the main zone. So once we wrap up this 20 ,000 meter program, I think what we'd like to see next year would be a bigger program that would be somewhere around 30 ,000 meters of drilling with four to five rigs kind it's earning on a somewhat consistent basis so that we can continue at the main zone and that expansion and continue at El Mesquite, but also be testing other targets. Because, you know, what's really exciting to me is obviously the south still has a lot more targets that we can build off of here.

8:42But also now you look up at the north alteration zone in the top portion of Grand Pillar, and we drilled those first five holes into that late last year. I mean, that's a big structure. It's 3.2 kilometers long, averages around one and a half kilometers wide. What it looks like for any of the sort of, you know, would-be geologists out there that might be listening or geologists that are listening is in the south and in the central, you're deeper into the epithermal system. So there's a big porphyry system that's about three, four kilometers south of us. And that's where you get the offshoots from those large systems that kind of produce these epithermal systems.

9:21So in the south, you know, that's why I'm seeing the gold so near surface is because we're deeper into the system. Whereas those first five holes, we drilled up on the north alteration zone late last year, you know, and again, in the big structure, it's never been drilled. And that, you know, we saw nice silver numbers and some pathfinder elements. And what that tells us, it looks like that's on top of the epithermal, which means you'd have to get down, you know, to 250 meters and around there to start getting into the gold. So again, And very large structure that something that big could also contain one to two million ounces ultimately.

9:54So we are currently running some sampling through there to establish further targets. But where I get extremely excited is you look at the central. And that area, you know, we didn't know anything about that until Q1 of this year when we were able to fly the magnetics on the central and the north alteration zone. And the way that's come back, it looks very similar to what you see in the South Block. It's a very similar size, not quite as big. And what it looks like is these big structures carry up from the South through the Central and then even potentially into the North as well. And the team spent a lot of time this year running a soil grid through there and systematically taking significant rock samples throughout, not just little chip samples.

10:40holes. And ultimately, the first bit of results we got back, probably we came out maybe a month and a half ago or so, was a one kilometer sort of target now that we have up there where you're seeing gold samples from surface up and around 2.4 gram per ton and, you know, some nice high silver results there as well and some copper too, which is interesting. So ultimately, that's another structure that's starting to look like it's a similar size to the main zone and to El mesquite. And that's just the early first bit of rock samples we've got that have generated a nice target there to go after next year.

11:16So if you start thinking like, okay, well, if things went reasonably well in the south, you know, you could be looking at a couple million ounces and we think we're heading there already just with those two zones we described. And then there's other targets in the south, but now you've got the central as well. And there's no reason to think he won't be able to make at least one or two discoveries in that large area too. So that's where you start to see some real scale with yeah with with talk van now is the potential here for this to be a you know four or five million ounce deposit with with a reasonable amount of success across these three zones and that's i think what we're trying to get across to investors and that's what some of the funds that are starting to look at the story are starting to see is that there's some real scale potential here um and again you know as we probably discussed on on some of the earlier interviews that we've done down in Sonora with heap leach economics being so strong.

12:11You're talking about really 750 ,000 ounces to a million ounces. It's going to be a production story all day long. So the question for us is, how can we build this? And then at the end of the day, you start showing in a meat resource, which I can talk about our timing on these things in a couple minutes. But if you can show somewhere in and around a million ounces to start with, with people seeing that, okay, well, that's just a part of your two main discovery zones and then potentially having other new discoveries along the way. When does a group get interested in coming in and wanting to add that on?

12:49You know, you've got Javier Reyes, that's CEO over at Gold Group and they've just raised 121 million US and, you know, you're hearing things that they're looking to build something big. Now they have 19.9 % of LUCA. So maybe there's a natural fit for those two to combine to start to build something towards an intermediate producer. You've got Axl Metals. That's very close to our project. They just received a permit to start building the San Antonio project. And, you know, they're looking at building that over the next, I think, 12 to 18 months. And I think they're going to look to get aggressive.

13:25They're kind of tied in with Silver Tiger and Go Gold as well. And that's another group that's pretty active down there. then of course heliostar is quite close to us and they've been having good success um with you know restarting uh la colorada and and they're drilling to increase the size of that so i think there's lots of groups and it's right on their home page just talking about trying to build towards an intermediate by 2030 i think is is what they're doing so you start to show a project that has that type of scale i think there's lots of groups that are also going to be interested in something like that.

13:56Yeah. A couple of things to unpack there. I mean, so some of that's long-term, some of that's medium-term and the short-term looking at, at 2027 and you think about a 30 ,000 meter package or drill program, excuse me. Do you, you know, how do you go about funding that? Is that something where you guys want to bring on a strategic now or you want to do kind of a, do a raise? I mean, just in terms of how you're thinking about that. Obviously, you know, we're recording this on Monday, November 2nd, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty ugly, pretty brutal for Precious Metals producers, developers, explorers.

14:33I mean, how you've been on the road, what are you hearing? I mean, I know you said you're getting interest from groups, but is there financing available right now at terms that people like, or that's something that you would like, or is this kind of a, let's wait and see how the rest of the year looks. I mean, what do you, how are you thinking about that? Well, I think everyone's curious to see what happens with the midterms coming up over the next couple of days here to see which direction gold's going. Obviously had a nice draw on Friday and seems to be making up some of that ground, getting closer to 4 ,000 again.

15:08So, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, we still have a couple million in the treasury. The pilot mine is nearing completion. That's going to be built here in November. We expect to start that first pass of production of 50 ,000 tons of material either late this month or really early December. You know, with the trenching on that first 6 ,000 tons, we're seeing some nice grade there, obviously, with one of those reported at, I think, over 4 grams per ton. And we'll see what happens. But I mean, the metallurgy that we put out, I think about a month ago as well, has been really strong. You know, a three-quarter inch crush is likely where the sweet spot is for the economics.

15:50And that's recovering around 75 % gold and around 50 % for the silver. So, you know, we've got a lot of confidence in expecting to recover 1 ,000 ounces. And if we can maintain like a higher average grade, the composite head grade from the metallurgy was about 2.2 grams per ton. So, you know, if we could average something like that once we've finished with this 50 ,000 tons of material, then you're going to be recovering, you know, significantly more than that in this first pass. But let's just look at it as a thousand ounces as kind of, you know, being really conservative here. And that still brings in in and around 5 million Canadian.

16:26You know, we've been having conversations regarding offtake with some groups and that's going well. I don't think you're ever going to have a problem selling gold in this current environment. So at the end of the day, you know, we have cash coming in with an agreement on that this year once we are able to process that. So, but on the other side of that, obviously, you know, to be aggressive, if you're looking at, like you say, a 30 ,000 meter follow up drill program with four or five drill rigs turning, that's going to be in around 10 million Canadian. So, yeah, we will be, you know, we want to make sure we do things the right way.

17:03that was our first bank financing we did back in q1 with stifle and and you know there was definitely a lot of interest in the sector we had a bunch of hedges come in on that one and so we we don't want to do the same type of financing so yeah we're having a lot of different conversations and we're getting interest from some groups and i think everyone including those groups are all waiting to see just get a bit of a sense of things i don't think anyone's going to go away if gold is sitting around$37 ,000 to$4 ,000. I think there's still a lot of cash to be made on good projects. So we have some options and we're talking with different groups and sort of seeing where we're at.

17:40And if the right money is there and we're happy with someone that's had a bit more of a long-term view and horizon on their investment as opposed to trying to clip a warrant sort of thing, then we'll look at that when the time's right. Okay. Switching to that pilot mine. Yeah. Because, um, ever since we've started talking and covering the talk fan story, I mean, this is pilot mine has been in discussion and has been an exciting program for you guys. Um, 10 year permitted pilot mine facility, 50 ,000 ton, uh, pilot production program. You guys I'm seeing some pictures. So things are, are, are, are building and being built.

18:20Um, you mentioned the, you know, the trench results and yeah, I mean, I don't want to gloss over the 4.6 gram per ton, you know, samples with up to 24.4 grams per ton. So yeah, just to focus on that, that's going to be completed here in November, or what is the timeline? And then are you still kind of thinking about that, you know, amending that permit to 100 ,000 tons, 200 ,000 tons you know in 2027 or how what does that look like the timing on all that should be like i said i think you know we should expect the first bit of production to start off coming up in either late november or probably early december is is more you know is a safer vet we're just in the last stages of completing that that's only weeks away though i mean that's yeah it is yeah it is exciting.

19:22You know, I mean, the pilot plan, and that's what really separates us from a lot of other junior companies is the fact that we are still very focused obviously on exploration, new discoveries, and resource growth as we move forward because that's obviously a key component of junior mining. And the pilot mine has a lot of benefits for us. It really helps us to de-risk the project. You're able to show actual meaningful full production and dial in your metallurgy, you know, with in real time. And that kind of showcases, you know, whether this project is going to work. But, you know, this is we're not reinventing the wheel.

20:02This is exactly the type of mining that's been in Sonora for decades. And so if there's nothing new there, we don't expect any hiccups in terms of that. But, you know, when you look at our kind of timeline here, the idea, you know, we had talked about and I should probably address that. We had talked about coming out with a maiden resource, you know, late this year or early into next year. But the reality is with the success we've had at El Mesquite and with new target generation through the sampling, you know, what's the point in coming out with a 400 ,000 ounce maiden resource that the market's not really going to care about and could possibly label us as small?

20:40And then that can take you a year or so just to change people's mind on that. Yeah. So with El Mesquite coming in so strongly, we feel that in terms of timing, Maiden Resorts would be better suited in the second half of next year, likely Q4, giving us enough time to generate something that would be in and around that million ounce mark would be, I think, a win, 800 ,000 ounces or a million ounces or a little over that. Somewhere in that would be the sweet spot where people can say, okay, well, they've got some scale here and they still have more ounces to add at both the main zone and the ski.

21:15And then look at all the other new targets that we've got. And maybe there's already some drilling into those by that point in time, too. And then, again, sort of back to the pilot mine, you know, having run that this year. And the idea is we think we can run that once a year. So potentially having run it twice, Maiden Resource, then coming out about three months after the Maiden Resource with a PEA study showcasing what we think are going to be really favorable economics. That seems like the best path to building the story out going forward. So that pilot mine obviously plays a significant part of that because that allows us to have a very strong technical PEA where most PEAs are going to be built off maybe a small bulk sample and some metallurgy.

21:57Well, this will be built off of 50 ,000 tons on this pass. And then we think we can grow the size of the production run next year on the pilot mine as well. So that really gives you a very technical, solid PEA to show the market. And then, you know, obviously a couple of the other benefits there is furthering the inroads into the community. And I think we've talked about this before. But, you know, one of the important milestones for us this year, alongside of getting rid of Calibri as a JV partner, was signing an agreement with that local community that's good for five years with a one-year extension that would renew upon successful receipt of a full-scale mining permit.

22:36And, you know, that was a big win for us, clearly. And the community has been on side. We've had a great relationship there. But that allows us, we're already employing people during the build-out of the pilot. We'll employ them while we run the pilot. They'll get a sense of how we operate and what this looks like with a full-scale permit in hand, you know, we're going to submit that next year. Just on a other side note there, I'm all over the place here, Ian, I apologize. But, you know, when I started the backlog at permitting, they were about 65 % through that backlog. There's been a lot of permits in the last sort of 10, 12 months that have been handed out and they're up around 83, 84 % caught up on the backlog.

23:17So they're almost through it now. It's a great time to get into the line for a permit, which we think will take in and around two, two and a half years to accomplish right now. So yeah, and the pilot and the last big benefit I think of the pilot mine is essentially, aside from building community relationship and de-risking, is also the capital that's generated. So as I mentioned, you know, for a junior mining company, bringing in and around four and a half to five million Canadian when we run that later this year, that's substantial for us. In terms of the pad that we're building it can handle in and around 250 000 tons of material so this first pass we permitted you know you go back to last summer took 30 days to get the full scale or pardon me the full permit for the pilot mine the infrastructure is good for 10 years uh in two weeks or 16 days i think it was we got 67 trenches permitted and that represents that 50 000 tons of material so having said that it's not as simple as just going in and saying okay with this time we'll permit for enough trenches to bring in 250 000 tons of material because that's on the environmental side.

24:19So we have to kind of go back and forth with our liaison between us and the permitting department and sort of try to get a sense as to where they would be comfortable for us to increase the size of that. But even just going from 50 ,000 tons to 100 or maybe 150 ,000 tons is very meaningful. As I mentioned, the program we'd like to run next year with four or five drills turning 30 ,000 meters are in around 10 million Canadian. So if we could even just double this, you know, and again, call it on the conservative side, 2 ,000 ounces recovered. Well, now you're generating enough to, you know, in and around covering that$10 million exploration program next year.

24:56And if we're actually able to maintain that higher average grade and bring in 1 ,500 ounces to 2 ,000, now you're talking about some really meaningful capital, especially if we're able to get it up to 150 ,000 tons permitted. So that helps us protect the share structure and stay, keep aggressive without having to go to the market every time we want to add a new drill program in. So those are some of the things. Yeah. Just cause you know, obviously some, some of those numbers could move around and some of those could move around in the way you want them to. Some of them might not, but I guess the thing that I want to take away there, I mean, it just allows you some optionality and flexibility, but probably like the key word seems like maybe a little bit of leverage, right?

25:33When you're, when you're going into conversations around financing, cause you're going to have to finance Everybody finances like that's not a dirty word. It just happens. But like, you know, it just does. But but like if you're bringing in revenue, consistent revenue and you know that it's you're just not at the whim of someone saying, well, you can't drill a meter if you know, if you don't take my money. Right. Like you guys can then go, okay, you know, maybe we don't do five drills or we, maybe we wait for better terms and we do two drills or, you know, it's not, you're also not limited by weather, right?

26:00You know, it's not like, well, we got to get drilling in this three months because then we're going to lose our, you know, then we're going to be buried under 12 feet of snow. So I do think that's important, you know, for you guys and your story and as you as you move forward, right, to have that have that pile of mine and that real revenue along with that real metallurgy as you as you go into that MRE and PEA. it it certainly it's kind of the icing on the cake or the sweetener if you will to the success we're having um and the potential we think we have in terms of exploration and resource development and things like that then you add that in yeah it's just a another layer for sure that really solidifies us well listen chris i think that's a great place for us to leave it today this is a really uh great update to hear about everything at mesquite and the pile of mine And I think next time we talk, you know, you might be you might be that pilot mine might be operating.

26:55So in a matter of weeks. So that's exciting news. And we'll look to catch up with you down the road as some of these essays come back as well. I look forward to it, Ian. Thanks, as always. Appreciate the time. Yeah, appreciate you coming by. That's Mr. Christopher Gordon, CEO of Talkvan Ventures. They trade on the CSE under the symbol T-O-C and on the O-T-C-Q-B under the symbol T-C-V-N-F. the information presented should not be considered investment advice mining stock daily and its 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