BeMetals Prepares To Commence Drilling As Japan Reopens Its Border

0:08 Hello, everyone. Welcome to B Metals Live Investment Summit today, hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce our speakers for today, as we have John Wilton, President and CEO of the company, as well as Derek Iwanaka, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Bmetals. Today, our presenters are going to be walking through a company presentation and then we'll be taking questions live. Remember, you can submit your questions using the Q&A panel found on the right hand side of your screen at any point during today's presentation. And as always, this event is being recorded and will be available to watch on six.com afterwards. Without further ado, John, I'm going to

0:38 hand things over to you. Get us started. Great, thanks very much for that introduction and Thanks to 6 for presenting, allowing us to present this on their platform. Welcome, everyone, to B Metals. This is going to be a relatively short update today, focusing on our exciting Kazan Gold opportunities in Japan And with a little bit of an update on the arrangements there, which we see as really moving forward now in the coming weeks. For those of you that might be new to the story, very briefly, a recap on the history of Bmetals. Bmetals was founded by Clive Johnson, Tom Garrigan, Roger Reesha and myself, some 3 and A04 years ago now.

1:33 Many of you will know Clive Johnson through the very successful exploits of initially Bima Gold and currently B2 Gold and building a team that have really delivered exceptional results to investors and stakeholders in their various mines, exploration properties around the world. Mark Connolly joined us a couple of years ago. Mark was formerly head of Papignon Resources that had the Focola project that was ultimately vended to B2Gold, and that's been developed into a true world-class gold mine in Mali.

2:20 My own background in the gold space relates to the discovery and resource development of the Ocho Cotos mine in Namibia, that also became a very successful development project for B2Gold. And we have a much wider team around us on the board, which includes the likes of Dr. Richard Salitto, based out of London, Someone you can truly say is a world renowned economic geologist, specializing in observational based drill core logging and mapping with a huge amount of experience on epithermal gold deposits, which is the focus of our exploration in Japan.

3:09 On our more advanced projects, and the more advanced projects that we review from time to time, I work very closely with Dennis Sandsbury, a long-serving member of both the BMAT and B2 team, really a wealth of experience in specifically epithermal gold deposits and projects like B2's Masbati mine in the Philippines being one of those successful development stories in that start of mineralization.

3:57 And in his time at Bima Gold, the discovery and development of the cupol deposit in eastern Russia. Again, another truly world-class deposit. So this slide sort of sums up quite nicely in a graphic the value creation of the BIMA Gold and B2 Gold team, very entrepreneurial-based and innovative when needs be in the gold development space. And here We are as B Metals that we see as the third company coming out of that same stable of cornerstone directors and investors. Early days yet in our value creation story.

4:45 We certainly see Japan Kazan Gold as being one of the major catalysts for us going forward in the next year.

4:56 We acquired the Kazan Gold projects in around April or May last year on the back of that transaction that also led for the first time in B2Gold becoming a cornerstone strategic investor in B metals with around 20% stake in the company and cementing what was already close ties both technically and financially between the 2 companies. Just to have a look at our overall portfolio at this point in time, as I mentioned, we're going to focus in this mini webinar on the Kazan Gold Project opportunities in Japan.

5:45 But we founded B Metals with a copper exploration project in northwestern Zambia. That was one of my former Antofagasta PLC exploration properties that I kept close to. We explore that property with a private prospect generator, where we really focus on very efficient, money in the ground focused exploration. Looking at the numbers of the investment we've deployed so far in Zambia, we're looking at probably in excess of 75% of those funds being actually money in the ground with our air core and core drilling. So running a very efficient program, exploring through the thin Kalahari sand cover looking for concealed world-class copper deposits that the Central African Copper Belt does deliver, such as Kansanshi, Kalambila, and Kamoa in DRC.

6:49 Interestingly, we've also brought Jogmech, the Japanese state entity, in as a technical and funding partner on that project, and we're currently planning another phase of exploration work based on the encouraging results that would indicate we are really getting closer and closer to a discovery of a major copper deposit on that property. We also have the very high-grade zinc and polymetallic South Mountain project, which is what we geologists would call a carbonate replacement deposit, similar to the Arizona Metals project in the USA. High-grade zinc running between 10 and 15% zinc, with a significant gold and silver credit.

7:40 And interesting there that zinc has now been added to the USA list of strategic metals in the USA. So let's get some more background to Japan and why we see Japan as a really exciting and fascinating country to explore the potential to unlock the gold deposits that are known there. A lot of the exploration is driven by the same terrain that hosts the Hishikari gold mine. Hishikari is mined by Sumitomo Metals and Mining. It's been in production for many decades and is commonly regarded as the highest grade significant producer in the world, with head grades through its history running anywhere between 30 and 40 grams per tonne.

8:33 And in total, it's now produced in excess of 8 million ounces of gold. One of the sort of key characteristics of the deposit is the epithermal nature, high grade underground mining of quartz and high grade gold. That shot in the centre of the slide gives you a sense of how that deposit looks and the mine infrastructure itself. You can see very little impact on the environment, underground high-grade mining. And because of that high-grade nature of these deposits, the footprint of the mineralization can be relatively small, but in that very high-grade nature, creating a huge number of ounces.

9:22 Hishikari is located down on the southwestern island of Kushu in Japan, And 2 of our projects, Toshiro and Hokusatsu, are located in similar geological environments to that that hosts the Hishikiri mine. Very young in geological terms, gold systems, but very high grade. That's the real come on for us in these terrains in Japan.

9:54 So as many of you will be aware, a frustration that we've had certainly as a company in the last 6 months or so, is being that since closing our transaction on Japan with COVID restrictions and the Omicron variant, Japan has been effectively closed for international business for a significant length of time. Thankfully, now Japan has started to open its borders to business travel as of the 1st of March. And our agents, including myself, our project's geologists, and importantly, our drillers with Energold, based out of the UK, are now in the process of applying for business visa travel to Japan that we expect to come through in the next weeks.

10:54 In fact, David Lochtotti, who's our manager of the country, manager effectively of our operations in Japan, has been with us here in Vancouver this week, brought with him some really important documents to the company that now allow us to apply for our visas in our home countries, and we will be able to travel now and continue our normal business activities in Japan. So at this point in time there are really 3 main companies exploring for gold in Japan. Ourselves as B Metals with the support of B2 Gold, a company called Japan Gold that have an early stage exploration alliance with Barrick and a company called Irving Resources that have Newmont as a significant shareholder.

11:52 So I think you can probably see the attraction and pedigree of the train coming out in the nature of those companies that are actually looking to explore and exploring in Japan. B2, Barrick and Newmont, a very good list of senior gold producers who really their teams have identified the potential for these high-grade gold discoveries in Japan in an area where you have prospecting rights, a relationship then to the Ministry of Mines in Japan, and a clear and transparent licensing system to the exploration potential of the OZ factor A.

12:41 So the private company that we acquired in April last year, Kazan Resources, had been trying to explore the Cato project up on Akaidu. That we see as our most advanced flagship project. There were some challenges with the ability to drill the main targets at Cato. The top picture there that Derek's put together for us shows the man-portable rig that was being used to drill the holes at Cato. Unfortunately,

13:21 the large alteration areas, kaolin and other clay minerals surrounding the high-grade quartz veins with this drilling equipment wasn't really successful in being able to penetrate the main high-grade target zones. As I mentioned earlier, we've entered into a drilling contract with Energold based out of the UK and as part of that we have purchased with Energold a brand new CS1500 rig Atlas Copco machine, which we have shipped

13:59 to Japan. And that's sitting now, that picture is taken in a warehouse that's about 1 kilometer from our first exploration target collar. Much bigger, but much bigger machine will have more torque to be able to get through those alteration zones and importantly be able to run in a lot more casing. So we've designed the hole with a mud recirculation unit so we'll be in much better shape to design the holes to get through the high-grade targets to the mineralisation at Cato. Just to give you an indication of why we're so excited about Cato itself, here are some of the examples of the mineralisation that has been drilled at Cato already, open-ended to the north-west and south-east on the property.

14:55 You'll see the drilling that was done in

14:56 the 1990s by MMAJ, the predecessor to Jogmech, really significant width intersections at high grades. And obviously within those 17 and 18 meter type width intersection, much higher grade zones at narrower widths. Even though the previous drilling by Kazan wasn't able to penetrate the high-grade targets at Cato, you can see that there are significant zones of lower-grade mineralisation as part of the alteration system around what we see as the high-grade core target to Kato itself. So really encouraging results as a standalone, but with the larger rig and the better hole design now, we anticipate much better drilling

15:48 and more cost-effective drilling as we move forward with all our properties ultimately in Japan. This is a sort of a cartoon of that sort of target area, the red zone in the middle there being the sort of high grade core to the mineralisation. And that's where we plan to drill 3 to 4 holes in the in the next months to get ourselves orientated,

16:15 map the textures in the mineralisation at Cato, which with the experience coming in from people like Tom Garrigan and Richard Salitto, will give us a much better understanding on things like where the boiling zone may have been in this mineralising system, which is a good indication and lead to where the high-grade material will be in the Cato mineralisation. We're looking to deploy approximately $2 million initially on that drilling at Kato, build our geological understanding and geological model of the deposit, and then look to continue drilling from there.

17:05 As I mentioned, we do have a team of 5 employees in Japan at this point in time. They have been busy in this time when we couldn't get our drillers there to get that larger rig working for us at Cato. They have been doing some excellent background work developing the other prospects and getting towards generating drill targets. One of the other prospects that we did surface work on was the Todoroki project on the western side of Hokkaido. This was a past producer up until World War II, produced somewhere in the region of 400,000 ounces at significant grades. And What our guys have done is some very effective channel sampling over areas where we know that those quartz veins weren't fully mined out and really significant intersections over 9g a ton gold with a significant silver credit in widths in excess of 2 to 2.5m.

18:15 So this project has really gone up our priority list. And with another phase of surface work here in the spring, we really see that Todoroki could generate some very compelling near-term drilling targets for one of our drill rigs that will become operational now in Japan. Also at this project, there was a sampling trail that we announced last year, where we finding boulders going up one of the drainages, getting higher and higher grade mineralization in quartz vein float, suggesting that there really is quartz veins with high grade gold developed right to the base of some post-mineral volcanics in that southern area of the license.

19:06 So that's really, really exciting upside exploration opportunities at Todoroki. We have other plans now with the opening of Japan to complete airborne geophysics on our Toshiro license down at Kyushu. That will also then lead to the identification of really quality, high grade gold targets on our properties. In terms of where we are in a corporate sense, the major change here came in April last year with the closing of the Kazan Gold transaction. B2 Gold coming in as that strategic 19% shareholder.

19:52 We have been, our share price has cooled off. Part of that was related to the gold price dropping off. But now, as we're all aware, gold price is now far more favourable. But really, where we're sitting now, very good buying opportunity at current levels with us being able to plan to get our drill rig going probably during April this year. We're still in a very good cash position to launch that exploration program in Japan and other properties in Zambia and Idaho. And that gives you really a snapshot of where we are. And with Japan now opening up and being able to get our drilling going there, we anticipate that we will really start adding value when those drill results start to flow from Japan.

20:55 So really in summary, you know, the depth of experience on the board of Bmetals and our sort of associated advisory team gives us the sort of depth and experience that we really need in a startup company such as ourselves. Access to capital is part of that. We've been able to fund the company through various cycles in the market. And we're in a good cash position to really deliver on the near-term catalyst, the main focus of which will be getting the drilling going at the Kato project in Hokkaido in Japan. So I think I'm going to wrap up there and we'll be very happy now, both Derek and I, to answer Any questions that come in the best way we can. And we'd like to thank our investors for being patient in these last months while we've been waiting for Japan to open up for business travel.

21:59 But we really think we'll be delivering with the drill bit in the next coming months, and in a really exciting situation for B-Metals. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Derek. I'd like to remind everyone in the audience at this point, we're entering into our interactive live Q&A portion of today's summit. You can ask any question you like using the Q&A tab on the right-hand side of your screen. Let's start with some questions that have already come in now. You know, Don has a couple of questions. I'll ask them all at once, but if we need to, we can come back and repackage it later. But how is EMET positioned to fund the exploration? What is the Japan budget? And can you break out the exploration spend company-wide for 2022? Yeah, sure, I'll deal with that question.

22:47 As I mentioned, we're looking to deploy in the next phase of exploration drilling about $2 million. The majority of that will be focused on drilling at the Cato project. However, we will be also completing surface work at Todoroki on the western side of Akaidu and a geophysical drone magnetic survey at Toshiro down on Kushin. So that's our sort of focus there. And that's how we see that sort of next phase of work moving forward. Okay, great, thank you. Don also wants to know what's the cash position end of year 2021 versus now?

23:36 OK, as per our last financials, we have approximately 8 million Canadian in the bank. Obviously, some of those funds are sort of, you know, all allocated. The good news in B Metals is that we have a lean and mean team in terms of our corporate overheads. Our project in Zambia attracts no overhead when we're not operational in the field. So our burn rate on cash is as you would need for a junior explorer and a real culture and a real focus to get those hard-earned exploration dollars into the ground on the projects. Fair enough. How many meters do you expect to drill in Japan this year? I would anticipate in the coming phase we'll be drilling between 1,500 and 2,000 meters.

24:27 Difficult to determine exactly on that drilling depends on how the holes actually progress. It's an evolving process, a feedback loop, if you will, where we think we are in the system as to how deep the holes might ultimately be. But somewhere in that 1500 to 2000 metres in the next phase. But ultimately, obviously, if we're getting good results, we would like to see that very much continuing in an appropriately aggressive manner. Thank you for that. Another question we've had come in is, will you also drill at any of your other projects this year? And if so, how much are you looking at for those? I think if we drill on one of the other projects, that might well be our Todoroki project.

25:14 But we will need to complete another phase of surface work to really focus in on a drill target identification at Todoroki. There's also the potential with favourable results from an airborne magnetic survey that Toshiro may also develop a drill target. Advantage being there that the relatively temperate climate at Toshiro means we can get all year access there for drilling, whereas it's more efficient up on a Kaidu to focus your drilling in from the spring onwards. Right. OK. And why should shareholders be optimistic about holding this stock?

26:01 I think that comes down really as hopefully we focused here on that at the current levels. When we start to get news flow coming out of the drilling results at Cato, that will be the catalyst for the company really and take us to the next level. As has been the case with Beamer Gold and B2 Gold, we also want to become a significant producer. A lot of depth and experience, how to do that from an investment financial point of view and how to do that from a technical point of view in the company. I would also just add that we're trading near a 52-week low at the moment, whereas Gold is trading near an all-time high, as are other metals like Copper and Zinc.

26:55 We've been buying ourselves. The Insiders, Clive has been buying hundreds of thousands of shares. John and myself have also been buying and I think others in the team will be buying as well. It's a terrific time to be accumulating shares when, maybe for bad reasons, but the metal prices are very strong and foreseeably going to be strong for at least the near term here. So could be a good time to be accumulating. Great, thank you for that, Derek. Thank you, John. That's all the questions we've had so far. So I'd like to thank you, of course, for not only walking us through that presentation, but also participating in today's Q&A session. To everyone in the audience, I'd like to thank everyone specifically who submitted questions, but if you didn't get a chance to get your question asked or if you think of one now or after the summit is over, you can get in contact with the B Metals team through their contact information found on this presentation, which is available in the handouts tab.

27:51 You can also find more information, of course, on their website, bmetalscorp.com. But before we wrap up for the day, I'm going to hand things back to John for some final words and closing remarks. Well, very good. Thank you very much for this opportunity on what we described as a mini sort of update on where we are. Really excited that Japan is opening up to business again. And we think that we'll be in a very good position when we get that brand new drill rig spinning on the Cato project here very shortly now. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much again for joining us today and I hope you have a good rest of your day and a good weekend. Cheers, gentlemen. Very good. Gentlemen. Very good. Thanks, Cameron. Thanks, Cam.