Contango ORE: Meet the Team

0:07 I'm delighted to introduce today Chris Kennedy, the General Manager for Contango Or's LuckyShot Mind. How are you today, Chris?

0:15 Fine, fine, doing fine. Thanks for having me here today. Awesome. So I wanted to get into a bit of your experience before I get into Lucky Shot. Cause I know, I mean, really honestly an impressive bio, but in addition to just really your extensive experience working in Alaska on multiple projects over the years. You also worked in Chile and in Peru and all over. So one thing that I think our listeners will be interested in is how is working in Alaska different and what kind of specialized expertise do you need? Well, you know, we all know that there are a few areas that are so-called Tier 1 areas to work in, and Alaska is that, you know, compared to, I guess, Chile. I guess if you ask people in Chile, their Tier 1 is, in their opinion. But my experience and the difference is that mining is mining, right? Whether it's open pit or underground or whatever, you develop, you design, and then you go after a processing plant that meets what your requirements are. All of that's the same. So that's pretty much the same as far as comparative, but there's a political difference as well.

1:27 And that's not only with your, I guess the main difference I would have to say is with the local villages that are close by and local towns are close by to the mines. They are starting to learn that the cash cow, if you will, the mine, the request to help and seek financial assistance is something that they're always looking for and have learned to ask more and more based on the experience from what's happening in other areas and other countries. That's one of the big differences. As far as expertise goes, there is a bit of a missing in that. So there's a lot of, here in the past few years, a lot of training has gone into that, whether it's design, whether it's geology, whether it's actually production, running a mill, how to operate a mill to fixing and repairing.

2:23 So there is a bit of a difference in that area for sure. Sure. Yeah, it's a wealth of experience, obviously helpful for pointing in the right direction when it comes to those. Let's zoom in on Lucky Shot. As the general manager for the operation, the property, what about the geology and potential of the project really excites you? Well, you know, I'm not a geologist, but I've spent enough time in the mining industry, I know a little bit about geology and what I'm looking at. But the Lucky Shot is an exciting project in that it's easy. It's fairly simple. And for me, not being a geologist, that says something for that project, quite honestly. You know, it's a mesothermal vein and it just continues and keeps on going and it's relatively like I said easy project.

3:20 But the complexity of that is how can you mine this and produce ore from that, not only using what the old conventional style, which is cut and fill and so forth. But what's the new technology out there that you can look at that maybe you can approach this differently or do a combination of all of the above to make it work a little better for you? It's kind of exciting, fun project. I like doing that type of stuff. I like to have fun. And that's why I've been in the mining industry for years, is because I have fun with it. Yeah. That's great. And it's so rare that somebody describes a mining operation as easy. So that must be a, that's a rare luxury. Usually people have a long description. That's anything but easy.

4:06 Well, you know, I've always gone by the saying that it's only easy when you say it fast, right? Fair enough. But for me and the experience I've got, it's a pretty straightforward project. No, that's great. And just, I'm gonna ask everybody at Contango the same thing. What are you looking forward to most in 2024? What's coming up?

4:34 You know, a couple of different things. One is to take the lucky shot to the next step, which we'll hopefully be able to do that this year, getting some funding. And then the other one is to get Manchow online and start processing ore at the Fort Knox mill, which I helped build and operate for numerous years. So it's kind of old home week. And I was there for the first bar of gold and I'd like to be there for the first bar of gold for the Manchurian War as well. Now that's fun. Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking the time today and looking forward to seeing what's in store for 2024. Yeah, I am too. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Please say to introduce Mike Clark, Contango Wars CFO. How are you today, Mike? I'm doing well. Awesome. I'm just going to go through a couple questions about your history, then we'll get into Contango and what's coming up this year.

5:26 So to get started, I'd love to hear because I know we have an industry audience who's always interested in different career paths in mining, etc. So I'd love to learn more about your education background as a CPA and how that brought you into the mining industry. Yeah, no, well, I started my my education going to BCIT, where I pursued my accounting degree. And from there, I moved into to do my articling at a public accounting firm. And so it's there where I kind of worked for 2 partners who focused primarily on mining and oil and gas audits, public companies. So for 3 out of the 4 years I was in public practice, I was just purely working on auditing junior mining companies, oil and gas companies, which kind of exposed me to the market in Vancouver.

6:15 It gives you a look at a different side of the industry for sure. It's always interesting. I know early in your career, earlier certainly, you worked for Gold Group and Alexco. I'm curious what skills you think you gained there and experience you got that helps you with your current role as CFO? Yeah, well, just going to the beginning, starting with Gold Group, that was my second job in industry after working for a couple junior mining companies in Latin America. But at Gold Group was kind of where I got my first taste of producing mines, you know, all in Mexico. You know, We bought mines, we built mines, we sold mines, we operated mines. It exposed me to that side of the business and I spent a lot of time down there, learning how things worked.

7:03 I was there for about 5 years, but after a while I decided it was time for me to move on. So I decided to move on to Alexco, which has the Kino Hill project in Yukon. And it also operated a environmental remediation consulting business. So There was plenty to do there. It was a bigger company with a great team. It was there that I learned a lot more, a lot more experience. We developed the Kino Hail mine, we put it into production and ultimately it was bought by Hekla, which was a great experience being a part of that sales process. But before that sale in 2022, We sold assets, I raised a lot of equity, I put debt in place, managed a streaming agreement, in addition to all the other financial reporting responsibilities that the CFO has, managing human resources, corporate governance, all that fun stuff. So a lot of experience gained there and learned from a lot of very smart people.

8:07 No, it makes sense. And then following that, what made you excited to work at Contango? Well, after Alexco, I had a little bit of time and my focus was to make sure my next role was working with good people on good assets. When Rick approached me about this position, I knew right away I was working with good people. Rick and I worked together at Lexco and him and I have kind of similar core values. And then after meeting the rest of the board, I knew that we were all kind of well aligned. So, that's on the people's side. But then on the asset side, Contango has 2 great assets. The Mancho mine, which is partnered with Kinross, is going to be producing this year and Kinross is doing all the heavy lifting for us. That's perfect.

8:56 And then Lucky Shot being our next project in line that could be another producing story in the next few years. I knew we had 2 great assets and all of this with less than 10M shares outstanding. The company is in a good position and I thought that it lent well to my skill set. The other thing that I liked about Contango, it's just an exciting me about it was Rick's vision and business plan for the growth of the company. And it's really focused on acquiring high-value assets and high-quality assets. And what I mean by that is the assets are, you know, they're high-grade, they're close to infrastructure, you know, on the highway system, you know, on the power grid, you know, have a clear timeline on permitting.

9:42 And, you know, and then hopefully the in and around other major companies that would be looking to partner on it and actually move it forward on operations. So I like that approach and it seems a lot simpler than trying to put mines in production, which I've done in the past. And so that's what really kind of excited me about the position. It's a unique luxury to have quality projects at different ends of the Sun curve. So that's all Contango's got in its pocket. I'm gonna wrap up just by asking what I'm asking everybody at Contango, which is what are you most looking forward to in 2024? Yeah, I think 2024 is gonna be a great year for us. This is going to be the year we should have our first production at Moncho. We already have our core team in place and to move forward on either the Lucky Shot asset or move forward on our acquisition strategy, which I'm very hopeful that we're going to be able to find other assets that tick the box that are in our business plan, and hopefully get a couple under our belt before the end of the year.

10:39 Awesome. Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to introduce Dave Larimer, Contango Warehouse Exploration Manager. How are you doing today, Dave? Doing well, thank you very much. Awesome, so I got a couple of questions about your history and then we'll get into what's up next at Contango if that works for you. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, shoot. Perfect, So I know Alaska, you have really extensive experience. It's very supportive. Tier 1 mining jurisdiction. But it does take some specialized expertise to manage exploration, I think, in the state. So I'd love you just go into your background exploring in the region. Yep, absolutely. I'll just give you a quick intro. My first entry into Alaska is with the United States Army, so I was stationed up here at Fort Wainwright.

11:25 All infantry, so it was a lot of outside living and sleeping in the snow below 0, thousands of kilometers skiing, you know, as the winter time, summertime, you're walking all over. So that's where I first kind of fell in love with Alaska. You know, so we moved back, started our geology career up here. You know, Alaska was the place to be. And really it's that specialization, no matter how much geology you get, you can zoom in onto a positive, but I kind of sum it down to 3 other things you have to specialize in. And it's really understanding your terrain, your logistics, and then of course the weather, understanding the weather in Alaska is so broad. To me, those are the 3 things that you really have to specialize in to optimize your your exploration potential up here. For me the perfect perfect example of this is I was running a large drill operation out of Red Dog Mai, northwest of Red Dog.

12:15 Knowing that terrain, knowing that weather, we're pretty confident that we could drill until October. You know, we're very fortunate. We're looking at the weather. We're able to actually tweak out 2 more weeks of drilling. So we were able to terminate our drilling about the middle of October. And that's north of the Arctic Circle, you know, very, very far away, remote. But now you kind of compare that to another drilling operation we had just South Central Alaska, you know, just North of Anchorage, little more steep terrain, different weather patterns. We were basically blown out of there by mid September. You know, so the weather, the train, the logistics, you know, you really have to specialize in. And that's on top of all the geology you got to get to be able to put these programs together out there. Yeah, it's funny. I always make fun of Ontario weather and say it's crazy. You guys are on a whole, there's a whole level above, that's Alaska. And there's whole different levels, you know, you're in the Northwest, Brooks Range, Southeast, Southwest. So it's, you really got to understand all those and how they all fit together to optimize your success and exploration.

13:11 Yeah, it's a, it feels like a learned skill. I don't think you can jump. It is very learned. It can be painful and costly at times. And no doubt. I know you worked with a giant like Tech earlier in your career. I'm curious what you find different and exciting working with Contango versus a giant like Tech. Yeah, I enjoyed working with Tech. In fact, I actually worked with them twice. You know, first with Pogo, and then I came back and then I was able to work with them on all the Red Dog projects. And working with the majors is fun. You know, when I started my career, I was like, Nope, I only want to be at the major only want to be at the major, you know, working with tech, I worked for the Nevada gold mines. And I briefly discussed, you know, I think the biggest major there is the mining the United States Army, but these majors are majors for a reason.

13:59 It's a great opportunity to contribute, You learn a lot, you absorb a lot. There's a lot of knowledge, institutional knowledge in these majors and a lot of systems. That's what makes these these majors work. For me, coming into a junior, I've worked on another junior, but working with Contango, the obvious difference is the size, obviously. But however, with reduced size, it becomes ownership and responsibility. You got a lot of systems you go through, pitching your budgets, both Contango, the ownership, the expiration ultimately stops with me. If something's screwed up, it's with me. It's that ownership of a project that I really liked working with Contango. You know, it's exciting, you know, to have, I don't want to call it freedom, but It's exciting to have the maneuverability, you know, in Contango to be able to explore other things as the exploration manager. Yeah, you're running programs, but you're also out there with the intent from, you know, where the board strategically wants to go with the guidance from Rick over the CEO. But after I got my left and right limits and it's just going out there and making stuff, creating value for the company. It's really exciting.

15:07 You know, what I really love about Contango is how it's structured. It's small, decisive, built for purpose, disciplined, focused company, with a commitment to excellence. And that's what we really liked about being with Contango. That's exciting. It's a privilege and peril of freedom is you get to, you know, flex flex a bit, but it's also your butt, right? Right on your neck. Absolutely. And looking forward to this year, I know you guys have a lot on deck this year, but in terms of your role, what are you most looking forward to at Contango in 2024?

15:40 From the exploration geology side, there's 4 things that really gets me fired up and motivated in 2024. The first one is the Mancho JB project with Ken Ross. While we're the junior partner, it's exciting to see watch Ken Ross continue to safely and effectively move this program and this project forward into pouring ounces. So we're excited with that. The next big one I get fired up on is Lucky Shot. You know, our Lucky Shot mine. I'm very keen to get down there, you know, continue our surface exploration, looking at opportunities to continue our underground drilling. We did, I think we previously talked about, we've put out our initial resource, published in May this year. You know, it was 105,000 ounces. It's just that initial seed. And then now we get to grow that seed you know whether it's linearly exponentially it's exciting to get down there to be able to pull programs and to to expand resources out there. So we're excited about that.

16:35 You know, obviously we've got a lot of things going on. We're also excited to get on the ground, do a small, decisive campaign on some of our grass field projects. You know, our Shamrock, Triple Z, Eagle Hona. Looking at small programs out there to increase our value position out there by understanding the geologic knowledge of these projects and getting a good evaluation. Then the last one obviously is all the other opportunities out there. You know, Alaska is a large jurisdiction, highly underexplored, So it's exciting to be able to continue our evaluation, exploration average to meet Contango's strategic mission in Alaska, and keep looking what's out there. You guys have tons of irons in the fire this year. Yeah, we do. Well, anyway, Thank you so much, Dave, for running through this. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon. Awesome. Thank you much.

17:20 Appreciate it. So it's great to have Alina White on today, Contango OARS Lands and Database Manager. Good to see you today. Hi. Good to see you. Just got a couple of questions on the goal of trying to meet the Contango team and learn more about them. I know that you studied geology at UNC before moving to Alaska. Really curious, did you always know you wanted to get into mineral extraction one way or the other, and Do you miss the summers at UNC?

17:49 So first question, no, I did not know where my geology studies would eventually take me. When I was in college, a lot of my peers were getting jobs in environmental remediation and some to the oil industry. And mining just isn't that prevalent in the South anymore. North Carolina was, I believe, the first state to have a gold mine and was the largest producer of gold until gold was discovered in California. But I didn't really know that then, so I didn't really learn about jobs in mining until I moved to Alaska. So when I came to Alaska, I followed my then boyfriend, now husband, to Alaska. He was going to study geology also at the University of Alaska here in Fairbanks.

18:48 And when I got here, a lot of people, other fellow geologists had jobs in the mining industry and I started learning about that. So that's what introduced me to jobs in mining and I really enjoyed it. And so I've stayed. That's always a good story. Sometimes when somebody drags you to Alaska, it doesn't have a happy ending, but it sounds like a very happy ending. So good to hear. Yeah, we've enjoyed it here. And I know just reading through your history that your work on Man Show actually predates Contango's involvement in the project. So I'm curious, 1, just to speak on your long-term experience there, but also how the project has changed over the development years and why are you still excited about it? So I started working on the Mancho project at the very beginning.

19:38 I worked for Avalon Development for Kurt Freeman and so we took on that project I believe in 2009

19:48 And initially it was a very grassroots exploration project. There hadn't been a lot of exploration on the Tetland lands, and so we were some of the first crews to get out there and see what we could find. It was a lot of, the first couple of summers, it was sampling all the drainages to find if there were any anomalous minerals to be seen. And then we followed, and there We had some good results the first couple summers. So we followed those up with some soil grids and eventually some drilling, which led to the discovery of the Manchurian deposit, or peak deposit. And so yes, so then just a lot more work to further define those deposits. And and so here we are today, mining, and that's very exciting.

20:45 And it's been a real honor to get to see the process from start to finish. Not many people actually get to do that. So that's been a fun journey to be part of. And, you know, there's just so much land there that's yet to be explored or hasn't been explored enough. I think the exciting part about the future of Mancho and the Tetlin lands is that there's just so much more to look at. And I think there's more gold out there to find. So that's exciting. Oh, that is exciting. Like you said, it is quite rare for somebody in the industry to be with a project right from an exploration property in a dream through to the first gold tour.

21:34 That's cool. It's cool. Yeah, very lucky. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you've worked at this point in Alaska for quite some time. And given your familiarity with the jurisdiction, what do you think Alaska gets right when it comes to mining? I think that the state as a whole is very supportive of the mining industry. And so it's exciting to see some infrastructure projects coming online soon to build roads and really just to provide access to more of our state. We don't have enough roads in the state of Alaska And so it's really exciting to see mining working with the state and getting some of those things accomplished.

22:23 And as far as my, a lot of my work revolves around mining claim tracking and things like that, permitting. And so I visit state agencies very frequently, and I'm always met with excitement about the projects that I'm working on, very professional and helpful advice from the state when needed. And so I just have always felt very supported by the state of Alaska for all of the mining projects I've been involved with. No, that's great. Yeah, people, I mean, people talk about tier 1 jurisdictions. Well, I saw Alaska was kind of a tier 1 plus. Like it seemed to go even a farther, a little bit than a lot of those jurisdictions do.

23:09 And this I've asked everybody can hang of this. I'd love to wrap up here by asking what you're most excited about in 2024. It's a big year for the company. Yes. Well, aside from the obvious, hopefully the first gold pour from the Manchurian ore will be extremely exciting. I know we're all excited about that. And I'm excited about some of our exploration projects that we have and we're gonna try to advance a little further this summer. So we have an exploration project called Shamrock in the Richardson Mining District. And That's another gold exploration project with a lot of historic mining and exploration.

23:55 We're compiling historic data and I'm really excited to follow up on some of the prospects we've honed in on there. And we've also got another project near Tok, a little bit northeast of the Manchot deposit. And that's a copper gold porphyry there. And we're gonna be drilling the main prospect on that land. And so I'm really excited to see what we find there and to advance those projects a little further along. I'm looking forward to seeing all that come together. But Alina, it's great to talk to you today. It's great to talk to you as well. Thank you. Awesome.

24:42 So it's really my pleasure to talk today with Keith Miles, Contango Ores Mine Superintendent at the Lucky Shot Mine in Alaska. Keith, it's great to talk to you. Yeah, good morning. And we also have a special guest, his friend Little Bit, who's joining us for this interview as well. Say hi, Little Bit. Wonderful. So, Keith, I got a couple of questions to ask you today. I'm going to start off by with 40 years work, which is really remarkable in the area with a number of different operators. I'd probably say you're the world's most preeminent lucky shot expert. So I'd love to hear about your experience with the project. There's a couple guys running around that have that much experience So, please tell me about your experience on the project your history there In 84 1984 answers cruise I was a line for a week we ran that answer what we call the answer script in 14-hour feet to In 1984, the Ensorts crew, I was the line foreman, we ran that, what we call the Ensorts drift in 1400 feet to construct some drill stations and prove that the down dip of the Lucky Shot existed and we had some luck with those quarter rails.

25:52 That started my experience with them. Then this last year we extended that drift on out and hit the down dip of the Lucky Shot Bank with a drift, which in my opinion is a really important and historic. So it proved a big rock or then in a season coming up, In the season coming up, I jotted a few notes down here. I don't know if it will look good in front of the camera. In the 2024 season, we are going to improve up more resources with the corridor program and launch into an actual mine plant.

26:44 I'm really excited about designing a safe, user-friendly underground operation and have experience in all bodies of light configuration. We're always looking for new technologies, but high-grade, narrow-vane mines have their own set of challenges and need to be approached with tried and proven techniques. It's very refreshing to me to be working with a group of people at Contango or to know what they're doing. In my 50 years or so, I've seen a lot of projects and I'm a total believer in the lucky shot. In fact, It's been on my bucket list for a long time.

27:35 That being said, do you have any more questions? Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for what's coming up next year at Contango too, and I really love, I've really enjoyed the opportunity to meet the whole team. I'm curious, you've worked in Alaska for such a long time. Do you have any notes about, you know, the type of specialized experience it takes to work in Alaska versus perhaps other jurisdictions? Yeah, of course, almost all mines are off the grid. It's a cost effective way to generate your own power and compress the air is always a challenge and it's strict to that trade and logistics. But you know, the lucky shot for a miner in Alaska is right downtown.

28:25 We're on a road system, we're only about 2 hours north of Anchorage. So that's a huge advantage. Most Alaska Bison are way out there. All right, that's true. And if you had to narrow in on 1 thing you're excited about at Contango next year, I know There's so many things going on this year, but if you had to narrow in on 1 thing that excites you most about Lucky Shot in this upcoming year, what would it be? Well, that we proved the down dip. We have a real good understanding, in my opinion, of the call on the upper part of the mine through extensive drilling that other operators did.

29:09 We get more core drilling done this year and get the same amount of proof for the down dip of that vein and we've got a real resource. We've got a resource now, but it's proving up more tons and ounces is where it's at. I like to tell people narrow vein, high grade system like this, you got to mine ounces and not tons. There is a difference. Sure. And just to wrap it up, oh, it's good to see a little bit. Just to wrap it up, What advice would you give to people in the industry looking to become a mine superintendent or to go into the same line of work that you have?

30:00 Well, you know what they say about a miner size 50 coke, size 2 halves. I'm like, I don't know what to do. It's just a lot of work. You gotta love it. You can only work that hard if you love it. That's typically very good advice. Well, Keith, it was great to get an opportunity to chat with you today. And of course, a little bit as well. And looking forward to seeing what Contango gets up to in 2024. I'm looking forward to meeting you guys too. Thank you. Have a great day. And you too, a little bit. I'm thrilled to speak with Vanessa Larimer, the operations manager for Contango, or Vanessa, how are you today? I'm doing great, how are you? Good, good. We're in a very different parts of the continent. So I'm looking forward to this conversation.

30:47 Oh yeah, but it's actually warm in Fairbanks today. It's 38 above 0. 0, see, that is warm. I think I'm 38 Celsius. Close, close, close. Close. And I'm very eager to talk about your work at Contango, just for anybody in the audience who might not be aware of your role. But I did want to get into your personal history first, because I understand there's a lot of interesting bits to it. What I gather is you were a volunteer firefighter and a squadron advisor, our Care team leader for a family readiness group I'm really eager to hear about what that means what your experience was there and how you think it contributed to your skill set that You have now. Oh Sure. Yeah, I was a volunteer firefighter throughout high school kind of followed in my brother's footsteps And truly, I think that was the foundation for me to learn to work as a team and support the community that my parents instilled in us.

31:40 And plus I got to run into burning buildings. So as a teenager, that was pretty cool. But mainly as a cadet, I only directed traffic mostly and changed oxygen bottles. So 2 times I got to go in a burning building. So, but with that mindset, it was a no brainer for me to volunteer my husband's family readiness group while he was active duty in the Army. And as a squadron advisor, I assisted other spouses and families during our for our deployed soldiers. And by that I just gathered information from command group and other post organizations to try to make the deployments a little bit less stressful. So we really leaned on each other. And then as a care team leader, I was there to sweep up the pieces after injury or loss of a deployed soldier.

32:34 And I still carry those families with me. All right, that's quite an experience. Comes to running into burning buildings, I'm more of the running out type. So it's certainly admirable. You're willing and eager to run in when there is a fire. It was fun. No doubt, but speaking of putting out fires, is my understanding, talking to the rest of the Contango team, is that you really are the key to the team staying organized and on top of everything. That's obviously quite a tall order. So curious, how do you keep the company's ducks in a row? I don't really see it as a tall order. Having had the volunteer mindset early in life, it's really just allowed me to jump in and get whatever task done.

33:20 And plus, I mean, look at the team I get to support. They're all number 1. That's true. And it's quite a good team. That's been a fun experience getting to meet everybody, but obviously being in charge, staying organized, and everybody says, you know, well, Vanessa's the boss. So it's good to hear about your experience there. But some people may not know that you're actually also the operations manager for Valhalla Metals, managing quite a large group, actually out in the field at camp. I'd love to hear more about your experience at camp versus in an office. Yes, last summer I got to oversee the build of a 24-person camp. It was up in the Brooks Range, which is a logistical puzzle that required several months of planning beforehand.

34:07 I spent just over 50 days in the field where I got to work alongside several of my cousins who live in the region still, and It was amazing to connect with my mom's side of the family. Overall in the summer, we did accomplish a lot. We built the camp, we completed LIDAR and ortho photos, ground gravity survey, diamond core drilling, we logged some historical core, did a few camp tours. That's just some of the highlights. But some days were long, but getting to spend the summer with my family was definitely worth it, and I look forward to going back. Well, that's great. At least you get a lot of sunlight in the summer up there. Yes, it did not set. Perhaps too much. It was SunCamp. There you go. I'm curious. I've asked everybody at Contango this.

34:54 Everybody's had really, really great answers, but I'm curious what you personally are most excited about in 2024 for the company. Well, we have an amazing team with great leadership, some really exciting projects like Moncho and Lucky Shot, and now being headquartered in Fairbanks, I can't wait to see what we do next. Working in the mining industry is 1 large family and I'm lucky to be part of it. Awesome. And I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what the company gets up to this year. Same here. Oh, Vanessa, it was really great talking to you today. Oh, thank you. I'm really happy today to find some time to sit down with Derek Mennegan, Contango Auras Director of Finance. How are you today, Derek? Good, how are you doing,

35:31 Romeo? Thanks for the time. Good. Good. It's great to virtually meet you. So I got a couple of questions about your personal history, but then getting into your role at Contango, you develop your skills, what you're most excited about this year. So let's jump right into it. Doomer Research, their team looked around, looks like you got a business degree from Simon Fraser. Curious how, you know, they often see this in business degrees. I'm curious how mining first crossed your desk as an industry to consider. Yeah, I got my degree, my business degree from Simon Fraser University many moons ago with a concentration in finance. I actually then did my education degree at University of British Columbia and taught high school for a couple of years, then decided to move on and worked at Raymond James, which is a financial firm as a senior accountant.

36:21 And then I have family in the mining industry. And so they've persuaded me an opportunity came up with a junior mining exploration company, Alexco Resource Corp, back in 2007. And so that was my first hop into the mining industry and haven't looked back since. That's good for you. So it is, it's often a family member. If you don't mind asking which family member was it? It was my father-in-law. Nice. That's great. I know, you know, quite a long career not to date you in mining, but I'm really curious about is really a specific experience. So you were a site controller for Hecla, you know, mid larger sized mining operation. Curious 2 questions really there. How did that experience help build your skillset and how is working in Yukon different from Alaska?

37:12 Yeah, well, don't worry about dating me. I think My gray hair will date itself. But back in 2022, September of 2022, Alexa was acquired by Hecla. And so, my role as director of finance transitioned over to site controller with Hecla. And Hecla is, it's a large company. It's a company that has multiple assets as opposed to the single asset that we had at Alexico. But my focus there was still on developing the Kino Health properties. And Hecla presented a lot of opportunities, heavy emphasis on reporting, both financial reporting and operational reporting. And so, you know, on the finance side, we'd have to produce our financials and go through a variance analysis on a monthly basis.

38:00 But there was really a strong emphasis on operational reporting and really started with the budgeting process. And that was great. You got to work with the mine team, the mine managers, the department has to develop a budget and then we would work through a monthly and quarterly re-forecast scenario. It was a great experience to work with mine managers and develop a short-term and long-term mine plan. So those were all been real beneficial experience. And then in addition to that, we would have to, you know, manage our working cap. That was, you know, when you have multiple assets, you want to put the resource towards those projects that were most economical. And so, you know, with that came along a lot of standardized reporting and metrics that would be developed to make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

38:51 And that was a unique and great learning experience. So yeah, I know, you know, Hecla was a, it set me up well for my future with Contango, you know, because information is critical to a company and knowing where to deploy your capital and working capitals and managing your working capitals, key in those were all things that were definitely a focus at Hack Cloud. In terms of Alaska versus Yukon, A, they're both very cold. They're, you know. Notable. So that presents some challenges, you know, operating a mine all year round. You know, we've, in both scenarios, you know, the time in Alaska and in the Yukon, we've had strong relationships with the First Nation community.

39:43 Clearly Alaska is a US jurisdiction and the Yukon is a Canadian jurisdiction. So there's some favourable tax advantages to Alaska as opposed to Yukon. And there's not a lot of as many consumer tax excise tax that you would incur in the Yukon. But both jurisdictions support the mining industry in large part. So often you hear mining companies are operating in challenging geographical regions. Lucky for Contango and my time at Hekla, those are both quite promising and favorable geographical regions to work with. So positive. That's great.

40:28 I know, and we mentioned the different assets and projects you've worked on. I know that across your career, you've worked across many stages of mind development from all of them kind of earlier exploration through to production. I'm curious, and you can have a mixed answer here, but What stage do you think is the most fun? You know, most fun for me was expiration. And the reason why is just kind of that whole, you know, being optimistic and seeing, you don't know what the true potential is. And so, you know, you're waiting to punch holes and waiting to get the assay results and seeing where this goes. And it's exciting. But you've got to conserve your capital and you're either, you know, raising money through equity raise or, you know, that's one part beneficial beneficial part in Canada is you can do flow through financing Or you know whether it's through debt, but you know, you have to watch where you spend them where you spend your money but But there is a lot of upside. And then you start trying to build a reserve in your resources and doing your feasibility and pre-feasibility studies and try and make things a little more real and actually develop a mind plan and then move it into development. And those are all also very rewarding and exciting, and you're a step closer towards production, which is kind of the end game or the end goal in all of this.

41:58 But that's a little more, you know, there's more metrics to kind of hold your feet to the fire and being like, well, how come your cost per metre or foot of advance is higher than what we thought it was going to be in those challenging ground conditions? And so there's all these other variables that come into play when you try and put a mine into production. But at the end of the day, most mining companies do wanna move it from the expiration to development into that production scenario. And I've been lucky enough to be a part of that cycle, seeing it kind of from tip to tail. That's awesome. And yeah, one of the things I like about Contango is you got projects at different angles, so you get to see different stages. Yeah. So that's a lot of fun. And speaking of, this is a wrapped up most of these conversations, the Contango team is curious what you're most excited about for the company in 2024.

42:51 Yeah, you know, Contango was a very easy sell for me to come across. A, from a resource perspective, you've got the Mantro property, which you're in partnership with Ken Ross. So great partnership there. You have a great asset, high grade. A lot of the challenges with most mining companies is it's capital intensive and it takes a lot of time. Montreux is fully permitted. You've got the mill at Fort Knox. You've got the roads built. So a lot of the risk in the projects already been dealt with. And then you've got Lucky Shot, which is also high grade. It's by the railway tracks. You could, I mean, not that it's done or anything, but you could potentially, you know, utilize Fornox as well as a potential solution to your milling.

43:46 So There's a lot of upside, as well as Shamrock and CCC. There's a lot of potential exploration targets that we could look at. That leads me to the other side, which is the people. I know Rick Benuenos as a board member from Alexco. Mike Clark was a CFO at Alexco. So these are both guys that have been in the mining industry for a long time. They're guys that I can look up to and learn a lot from, which was important to me in this progression. And they're guys that are always looking to move things forward. You're never kind of in a constant state. You're always looking to add more value to the company, whether it's through M&A or looking for efficiencies.

44:36 They're always looking to move the value of the company forward. And so to me, that's exciting. It's never a dull moment. And it looks promising from my perspective. So I'm happy to be part of the Contango team. That's great. I'm certainly looking forward to see what 2024 has got. Thanks so much, Derek. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, I appreciate it, Romeo. You take care.