Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
0:30 As always, the summit is being recorded and will be available on six.com and on our YouTube to watch afterwards. Without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to Dan to kick things off. Romeo, thanks very much. And hello everyone. Thank you for joining us again today. It's a very exciting day. Yesterday was an exciting day, putting out this updated preliminary economic assessment on DuParcay. So that's really what we're here to talk about today. It just so happens we had our whole board at the project on Wednesday, so It's all very fresh and tangible. We're absolutely delighted with what's come out of this PEA. I think a really clear and articulate demonstration of the value of this project, at least at a starting point. The other thing that I think will come out of today's discussion is you hope you'll get a sense that this really is the starting point for this project.
1:24 We're very confident in the ability to continue to grow this project. And yeah, well, without much further ado, we'll get right into it. I'm going to be making a few forward-looking statements here. I would encourage you to have a look at this in more detail. I think it's just kind of maybe jump to the conclusion. The real takeaways from this PEA, just to kind of set the stage. To set the context, remember, this was a project that we consolidated our ownership of last year for a total of about 25 million Canadians. And I think that's important context when you look at the demonstration of the value and size and scale and really strategic nature of this project that we're putting this initial concept forward on here. This is one of the largest development stage projects in Quebec and in Canada.
2:18 3.4Moz of indicated resource and another almost 2.7Moz of inferred. It has the ability to produce more than 230,000oz a year. And all in sustaining costs less than the $1,000 U.S. Excuse me, cash costs less than $800 U.S. Over what I'd call an initial 11-year mine life. So if this project we're producing today, this would be the third largest gold producer in the province of Quebec, just for context. This is big enough to be meaningful to anyone and located in the middle of probably the most prolific Gold Belt in the world and certainly one of the most sought after. Our base case economics run at $1,800 shows really strong economics on a base case for the project.
3:13 But the more important thing, I think, as we've been talking about it over the last couple of days, our investors own 1st mining for leverage to the Gold price. I don't think anyone buys 1st mining if you believe we're going into an environment where the Gold price is going down. We all believe that we're going to see stronger gold prices. And if that is your view, the gold price, the leverage that the fundamental value of these projects have, this project particularly, has to the gold price is phenomenal. I think it's got to be between Springpole and DuParquet, one of the best high leverage exposure to Gold price investments that one can make. So we'll talk a little bit and put some numbers around that as well.
3:59 We think that there's importantly, a really significant upside to the mine plan and the economics with the existing resource base that's there. So for context, you'll see the PEA mine plan is producing about 2.5Moz of Gold over the 11-year mine life on a resource that you can see will be significantly larger than that. So, importantly, we've updated the resource on our Pitt and Duquesne projects, which are just to the east, about 15km. It's all 1 contiguous land package by virtue of the property we acquired from IAMGOLD this year. But really, I think, really interesting opportunities with Pitt and Duquesne, where we'll talk about how some of those resources have come together as well.
4:52 Lots of interesting things for us to look at there. Opportunity importantly to scope this project as an ESG-focused project, but really to integrate the management of the environmental legacy that's there from the past mine, the historic tailings, which we have as resource and we will process in the new operation. And ultimately dealing with that environmental legacy through a development plan that really is designed upfront to address those issues. And the next step for us really, we're kind of already on this path. Our shareholders who follow it closely will know that we raised about 5 million in Quebec flow-through funding, really targeted at exploration at DuParcay.
5:46 We're just about complete our Phase 1, 5,000m program that should be wrapping up in the next day or 2. And then look to be launching pretty quickly from there into a Phase 2 program, which we're just finalising now, but 20,000m to 25,000m of drilling, which I think is going to continue to demonstrate that there is real opportunity to continue to grow these deposits. And I've said this before, our predecessors at CliftonStar did not run out of Gold. They didn't run out of targets. They didn't run out of drilling opportunity. They kind of ran out of time and they ran out of money. And I think it's something that James Maxwell and our exploration team are very excited. We'll talk a little bit about how we think this project is going to continue to grow. So just to set the context for those of you who may not be as familiar with it, this is the location of the project and this is our project area here.
6:49 It's located in the municipality of Duparquet, which was a town built around the original mine in the 1930s. In fact, we were there just this past week. And yeah, it turns out that 1st Gold was poured in DuParc in 1933. So we're really 10 years from approaching that real centennial moment for that community. But location-wise, we're about 40km from Ruanaranda, which is a major mining hub and obviously home of the Glencore smelter. So a very, very important place regionally in mining. But in the bigger context, This is one of the real strategic elements of this project. In the Abitibi, 200 plus million ounces of Gold produced in the Abitibi.
7:41 And if you look at where DuParcay is, you draw a line between Val d'Or and Timmins, you're pretty much in the middle of it. So I think a deposit with real centre of gravity and something that I think, again, fits very importantly strategically into one of the most sought-after Gold belts in the world. This also just gives a sense of where these projects are now sitting. You can see DuParcay with 3.4Moz of measured and indicated, 2.7Moz of inferred. But that stacks up. If you look at the, call them undeveloped projects in Canada, take out these projects that are in construction right now.
8:32 This is a project that is going to be sitting as easily a top 5 development project in Canada. And I think 1 that has enormous opportunity to continue to grow. But let's not forget that we also have SpringPool in the company here, which again, similar size and scale of deposit, similar district scale exploration opportunity, and similar leverage to Gold price appreciation. Although as we all know, Spring Coal is just that much further down the feasibility and environmental assessment process. So I think it's absolutely unique to have this type of opportunity sitting inside a company like 1st Mining. And we'll start talking a little bit about what that leverage to the Gold price means. But this is, I think we're very, very happy with the way that this is shaping up. And particularly as we move into an environment of higher gold prices, which we all think we're gonna get to.
9:34 So just some of the PEA highlights here, and as we said, average annual recovered gold from the project. You know, 200,000 ounces is an important threshold for it being an upper mid-tier scale project bordering on a large cap minor scale project. As I said, for context, if it were producing today, this would be the third largest Gold mine in Quebec. The total ounces produced, you can see there at 2.5oz, still leaves a lot of opportunity for this resource to expand. Expand the underground, expand at depth, Importantly, expand along strike, expand in connecting some of the pits. We'll talk about that as we get into the geology. The life of mine cash costs here, when you look at that show a project with very, very robust margins.
10:29 I think that's very important where we're sitting here today. And importantly, initial capital scoped about CAD$700M, a little bit more than US$500M. And I think when you look around the world at projects capable of producing this kind of size and quantum of Gold with this amount of district around them. I think it's very rare that you can build projects of this scale for that kind of capital. So after tax NPV at an $1,800 Gold price, just shy of $600M. Our IRR at 18% and a strong after-tax payback 4.8 years. The pre-tax payback is like 3.8 years. This is a robust Gold project. Again, importantly located in an area of exceptional infrastructure in the middle of probably the most sought after gold camp in the world. So there's a lot more detail on here. This will all go into our presentation. We're not going to go through this, obviously, number by number.
11:33 The overall scope of the project, a few of you will recall that the project, the ore at DuParquet is refractory so it does require secondary processing. What we've scoped here is as simple a project as we can. You basically mine the ore. The strip ratio is about 5 to 1, a little more than 5 to 1 in the open pit. But you're mining the ore, ultimately feeding the plant at 15,000 tons a day, a combination of open pit and underground, but you're just starting the upfront capital with the open pit. And it's a crush, grind, flow to concentrate and ultimately selling that concentrate on the market. So there are a number of different places that that can go. And one of the beautiful things about where we are is blessed with infrastructure.
12:26 We're less than 30 kilometers from rail. We are not that far to be able to get it onto a boat in the St. Lawrence. And lest we forget, we have Canada's largest Copper smelter at the Horn, less than 50km away. So lots of opportunities for that secondary processing. We need to understand that better as we go forward. It's an important part, but I think a number of different options that we can look at at that point. But listen, the point that we want to make on this leverage to the Gold price, it's interesting as we looked at these numbers, it's very similar to SpringPool in terms of the quantum of that leverage.
13:08 You're looking at, call it $250M of pre-tax NPV for every $100 in the Gold price. And just let that sink in for a minute here. It's about the same as Springfool. So, you know, rough numbers, you add that up on both of our projects, every $100 in the gold price reflects as about 400 to $500 million of pre-tax NPV in this project. For a market cap today that is around $100 million, this is exceptional leverage to an increasing gold price. And I think that's where when you think about longer term, where the project is going and the environment we believe we're going to be in in a few years time, it gets very, very exciting when you start thinking about the really exceptional share price appreciation potential with 1st mining here.
14:10 This gives a little bit more in terms of sensitivities on capital cost, on operating cost. But the most important thing where you see these numbers move the most right up there, obviously, is that sensitivity to the Gold price. So yeah, I think we've said enough about that. This just kind of gives the annual average production profile. And this, you can see most of these years, this is a mine that's producing 220,000oz to 250,000oz a year. That's the same scale as most of the Canadian mines that Newmont would have. It's about the same scale as the Canadian mines that Barrick would have. This is a project, particularly where it is, and strategic in nature.
14:56 This is a project that is, I think, meaningful enough to be important to every Gold producer in the world. And again, located in absolutely the most sought-after jurisdiction for Gold on the planet. This interestingly just kind of shows some of the open pit and underground grades. Some of the years, and particularly in the early payback period years, there's some very good grade being fed to this plant. When you're looking at open pit grades, you can see there year 2, year 3, 1.8, 1.5, That would benchmark as one of the highest grade open fit mines in Canada and globally well above average.
15:42 So while there is some secondary processing that one needs to think about in terms of that grade needing to support. The reason that this works is that this is a large and robust high-grade deposit. I think there's lots of room for us to continue to grow that underground component as well as we better understand it, as we drill more into it, as we find new zones. One of the important things that James Maxwell, our VP Exploration points out here, and I think you kind of get past the cashflow part there, but it really does play into this resource table. We need to remember that most of this resource that we're looking at, at DuParcay, particularly at the Beattie and Donchester sides, which is the old past producing mines.
16:34 This is what's left after our predecessors mined 1.5Moz at 4g out of this deposit. And why that is important is because if you think about outside of the Beattie and Donchester, when we're looking at Central DuParcay, when we're looking at Dumico, when we're looking at some of the exploration potential that we think we're going to have on the IM Gold ground, those areas that haven't been mined, you know, what we had at the Beatty and Donchester was, you know, 1 million and a half ounces higher than this at 4 grams in the first 500 meters, a bunch of which would fall into an open pit if you were going to do it today. So it just speaks to the golden dowment of this system. And this is one of the best understood systems at the Porcupine-Destore fault, one of the major controlling structures in the Abitibi.
17:35 You know, dozens of mines that have been built on this and around this structure over the years. So I think that all says there's a lot more that we expect we're gonna be able to find here. And interestingly, we updated our resource on our Pitt and Duquesne projects, which we recall sort of sit about 15 kilometers to the east of the main DuParquet project. And some very interesting things coming out of pit and Duquesne as well. You can see there, you know, strong, you know, indicated and a larger inferred resource, including for the first time an open pit inferred resource at Duquesne. Now, there are different deposits. They're more narrow vein, high-grade deposits.
18:22 But I think it's something that really bears more examination on our side. Those are not at all included in the mine plan at DuParcay right now. So, opportunity again for us to continue to think about integrating that into the next step of our assessment of the project. And then on top of that, we put out a news release earlier this week, which was a little bit of a teaser in advance of the PEA coming out. But I think what we really wanted to show there was that this really is the beginning. This is an underexplored area in spite of having 270,000 meters of drilling into it and all the work that's gone into the prior pre-feasibility study in 2014, all the metallurgical work, all the environment work that's been done.
19:17 There's still a lot left for us to find here and our team on, you know, sort of right back to basics, geological targeting, developed the target, this buzz target, which we then went out and tested and you can see some of these results here. These are very interesting, you know, 4 grams or 4 meters of 6.5 grams. All in new zones not already in wireframes, There is real opportunity for us to continue to extend these and discover new zones again, at depth, along strike, down plunge. There's a lot of opportunity for us here and that's what we're really excited to target in this Phase 2 drill program that we're hopefully kicking off here quite quickly.
20:13 With that, we'll just summarize here and then go right to the questions. The key takeaway, this is, I think, what we put forward here demonstrates that this is one of the largest development opportunities in Canada, and specifically in Quebec. It's I think a globally significant development opportunity here with robust economics, manageable capital costs and very, very strong leverage to an increase in gold price.
26:48 that wouldn't have any royalties on it. And that's just by virtue of the fact that our partners said more or less own this project since the 1950s. So I think that's important financial lever there. And then when we get to the debt equity split in that breakdown, one of the things that's important is that $700 Canadian reflects the upfront capital cost of purchasing a fleet and purchasing all of your equipment up front. But in the IRR calculation, there's an element of equipment financing assumption that's been made in there. And we think that there's at least a couple hundred million dollars of equipment financing. Overall, between debt and equity and potential royalties or streams, there's lots of different avenues that could come to play in that.
27:43 Those are all things that I think, as we move down the track here, we'll be dealing with those on Springpole, I think quite a bit earlier than we'll be dealing with them on DuParquet. Lots of things to keep in mind. Lots of partners to work with. But I would say, importantly, if you think about how a larger mining company might be able to fund this, you know, this is largely in the throw weight of being funded with, you know, free cash flow. This is a project that a big company could fund out of free cash flow pretty easily. No, it makes sense. Another question, they're happy to see G-Mining services conduct the report. They want to know if the company has any experience with projects similar to DuParquet, and they're wondering what the chance is the estimates are too conservative.
28:35 It's someone who might have spent a bit of time with their friends at G-Mining before. You know, listen, they were delighted to have worked with or to be working with the team at G-Mining. I think one of the things that they bring to a project like this is a real project execution mindset. They are best known for real construction. They build projects. And they've built a lot of projects. The team over the years, most of them, the senior team members all cut their teeth in the Cambior days in the Abitibi. This is their backyard. In fact, the projects, they're part of the properties we bought from IM Gold, World Cambior Projects, which is sort of the genesis of G-Mining.
29:24 I wouldn't say that they're necessarily over-conservative, but when you dig into the numbers, you'll see that we've got a pretty healthy contingency in there. It's about $125 million. And that's kind of blanket 25% contingency on the project. It's a PEA. It's early stage. There will be things that were left out of scope and things that you'll subsequently figure out that you need to do. We've experienced that going through the development process with SpringPool. I think it gives a decent benchmark to start. And I think importantly, the team at Gmining is right now working on construction at Greenstone in Ontario.
30:11 So this is a very, very, very similar project to Greenstone in terms of size, scale, complexity, the environmental aspects of it that need to be managed. So yeah, I think we've got great databases and great real practical input from the team at Gmining about that. Perfect. Thanks. Warren Wrightson, with the PA now announced and the 5,000 meter drilling wrapping up, how soon could we see a PFS analysis begin at Duprequet? That's a good question, Warren. I think we're probably going to want to get through the kind of phase 2 drill program first, before we really roll up sleeves and start into the full bore of a PFS.
31:01 But this is the time, with this now finished, you take a step back and look at what are some of those long lead time items on a pre-fees or a fees? What are the real risk items that you need to understand? And I think we're prioritizing a bunch of those, including on the environmental side, particularly. That'll be a real focus for us over the next year where we're targeting some early site reclamation remediation work that I think will leave this site in a much better position. But yeah, I think it's not something we're going to dive into immediately. And I think we'll have a better sense in addition to our own work, but also talking with regulators and kind of scoping out what a What a path for the project might look like on the permitting side So we need to I think do those things over the next Over the next 6 months, let's say and then should be able to kind of commit to a PFS timeline sort of at that time as well.
32:07 Keep them busy. Robert asks, what's the expected annual expenditure on SpringPool and DuPriquet for the next 2 years and how are you going to finance? It's a good question. So we're right now kind of working those budgets up and had a good board session looking at that. I mean, I think it comes down a little bit to what is the must-have versus nice-to-have in terms of timelines, recognizing that capital is reasonably tight right now, but we've still been able to continue to monetize some of our marketable securities. I think we'll continue to do that. Obviously looking at what are some of the other assets that we could potentially maybe turn into cash here in the short to medium term.
33:02 Those project interests and marketable securities have 20 or 30 million, well, $40 million of value when you add in some of the other payments as well. So in some senses, it's kind of a bridge to that. But yeah, I think the program for us, first and foremost, to get Spring Pool to the environmental assessments. You know, like I say, we're working those numbers up right now, but that would be in the, from here in the 15 million range. And we're sitting with, call it 10 today. So yeah, it's good. I think it's kind of looking at a combination of continued monetization of some of the other assets. And then looking at what the other funding alternatives are.
33:51 We've continued to look at potential for, you know, royalty or stream financing on the projects, which we've had a number of discussions about. Yeah, So I think we'll continue to look at all what all of those options might be. Perfect. I got a couple of questions and I'll kind of summarize altogether. But just looking for your perspective on SharePrice movement following the announcement yesterday. Well, I think our colleague Paul Morris put it best. At one point yesterday morning, when it first came out, we were the only green thing on his screen, which was a sea of red. Flats the new up.
34:38 Would we have liked to have seen a better share price appreciation or share price movement on the back of demonstrating that something that we bought last year for $25M, we think is worth $500M plus. Yeah, I'd love to have seen a better share price movement. That's where we are in this sector right now. And we're all feeling it. As a big shareholder, I'm feeling it. I could tell you having spent 6 hours with Keith on a plane yesterday. As a bigger shareholder, Keith's feeling it. It's frustrating. It really is. And I think it's really across the development sector. You've just seen the summer doldrums and ultimately, leading to a great summer of capitulation.
35:27 A lot of shareholders are throwing in the towel. But I would tell you, when you have a company holding a couple of projects with 4 to $500 million of fundamental value leverage for every $100 of gold price movement. And if you have a positive view of where the gold price should be going and you can acquire that today for, you know, a market cap of 100 million dollars. This is This is a contrarian investor's dream right now. And for us, it's about staying the course. It's about delivering on those fundamental value milestones.
36:15 And ultimately, that value is going to be recognized by the industry. You are going to see, and I think that's one of the things I'm most excited about for the fall here. I think you're going to see that larger producing mining companies are going to come to the realization that it's just not going to get any cheaper and they can't find and develop resources any more cheaply than they can buy. So Again, we all absolutely share the frustration with the share price movement. I wouldn't take yesterday's flat to down trade as anything other than we're still kind of waiting for the enthusiasm to come back into the sector. And when it does, I think we have one of the best positioned portfolios of assets to really take advantage and give our investors that leverage.
37:16 No, thanks. Thanks for that. Ernst asks about your cash situation and then inquires if there's a reverse split on the horizon with a good number of question marks following. Well, no plan for a reverse split on the horizon here at all. It's something that's brought up frequently and Keith's been very clear that, you know, absent some major, major catalyst, there's no reverse split on the horizon. So yeah, no, I think that's been well discussed and something that, you know, yeah, Keith's been very clear on. Perfect, thanks for reiterating. M. Stewart asks, do you still have the support of the surrounding community? Presumably they're speaking about DuPont Can. Yeah. And that's one of the things that has been very interesting. And I think we've certainly prioritized in the last year is building that relationship and building our presence in that local community.
38:23 You know, we've actually just sort of refurbished what was our old garage building in the town. Part of what we acquired in the town and around the town when we acquired the companies that own the surface rights for DuParquet, is an enormous amount of surface rights. So we basically own all of the land around the town. And that's important because this is a municipality that's been looking to grow for years. And so it leads to an opportunity for us to really work with the municipality to create a new vision for what this town could be and make sure that you're starting from the outset, looking at what the infrastructure development can bring to the long-term sustainability of that community.
39:17 So yeah, we've actually met with the mayor and a couple of councillors on Wednesday. Again, we've always been incredibly welcomed into the community. You know, another community open house coming up shortly. There's gonna be lots of questions. I think everyone is still really looking for detail. And, you know, this is an interesting time with this PEA because it's a snapshot, but it's still very early in the process, such that if there are elements of the development plan that community feels strongly about, they can still be changed. We're a long way from having things locked down and ready for construction. So it's that benefit of the real early engagement and that relationship building. And then, you know, we're trying to have a real presence in the community. We've got a geology team there working now pretty much full time.
40:13 You know, we've got a presence on Main Street and we're, you know, a sponsor of a number of the festivals in town and really taking our role as a neighbor very seriously. And I think that's ultimately how you build that community support. But I'll tell you, if there's a place anywhere in the world when you're talking about developing an open pit mine in proximity to a town, all you need to do is get in a truck and drive, you know, 100 kilometers toward Val d'Or and stop in the town of Malartic. And you can see what that looks like. This is not conceptual to people and ask people in the town of Malartic if they're happy, if it's there or not, and then ask them how they like their new grocery store and ask them how they like the 4 new car dealerships that have built been built there and restaurants and economics, spin off development and, and, and, and like, and that's now a project that's mined through the, you know, like this.
41:16 This is like Malartica at the beginning, it was an 11 year mine life, right? It's mine through its initial mine life. And they're still now talking about mining there until 2050, I think. And you'll see the same thing at DuParquet. I'm absolutely convinced of it. You'll have a big initial opportunity and then you're gonna continue to find more and more and more. And I think you can set yourself up for several generations of this being a really important contributor to the communities in the area. There you go. Thanks. Ron from Ron's Basement, thanks for joining us, Ron, asks, how does the initial cost estimate of 700 million compare to other recent large scale mines, which have been or are being built in Canada?
42:06 I think when you look at a number of those others, one of the closest comparables would probably be Maginot, which is about 10,000t a day. Magino will end up, I think the overall spend there is going to be about 800t. A lot of the challenge there, I think, was in execution and trying to build a project in the early days of COVID. And that I think really led to some challenges. Cote, which is a much bigger project, will end up being 2Bn+. Greenstone, which would be 20,000t a day, I think Greenstone is 20, maybe 25, will end up being 1.2, 1.3.
43:02 We've got good benchmarks with Springpole when we've looked at a couple of different internal scoping studies on different throughput. So it benchmarks a bit lower, Ron, But a part of the reason that it benchmarks lower is just the infrastructure in the area, right? When you're located 20 kilometers from where you got to tie into a power line, and you're talking about Hydro-Quebec, and you're talking about the amazing hydro grid that you have in Quebec. And you have highways to site and, you know, people are gonna be able to live in towns and, you know, commute into work. You're not necessarily gonna have to build a bunch of the other infrastructure that you need.
43:52 I think we're just very much blessed with what exists today at DuParcay and the region that it's in. And I'll tell you, we're starting to see some of that benefit even just with our initial drill programs. It sounds a bit bizarre, but our drillers work a 5 and 2 schedule. Our drillers go home at night. And as a result, you get really good people and you get drilling costs that are a fraction of what you would find in most other places in Canada. And incredible productivity. Incredible productivity. I don't think we've missed anything in the scope.
44:42 And the other part of it is, metallurgically, if you're just looking at floating a concentrate, it's actually a pretty simple process. And, you know, even versus the process flow sheet at Spring-Pool, which is substantially more complicated with flotation and fine grinding and regrinding and 2 leach circuits, this is like crush, grind, float. And kind of that's it. So, you know, it's, I think it does really kind of help keep it simple from that perspective. And I think that reflects in low operating cost, and it reflects in lower relative capital costs. Perfect. That's a lengthy question, but it's right from the press release. They note that in the press release, you said the DeepRaket project represents a unique opportunity to address the environmental legacy issues from historic mining operations.
45:34 The question asker is curious what those environmental legacy issues were and how has it changed? Yeah, and you'll see when we put out the PEA, it'll talk about it in more detail. So the old mine, the Beatty and Donchester mines, the ore is refractory, so it does require some secondary processing. In the 30s to the 50s, They have a roaster, which is still on site. And they used to roast the ore, basically, cook it at high temperature to oxidize the sulfur. So when it was running from the 30s to the 50s, as was the convention at the time, a couple of things happened. 1, they didn't really plan tailings.
46:20 They just kind of put the tailings out the back of the plant. And so you can still see that in Google Maps. There's a large historic tailings area, which is just more or less a fan of tailings that over 20 years they just deposited into the environment. We've learned a lot more since then about how to manage appropriately and effectively manage tailings. What's important from that perspective, from our perspective, those 4 million tons of tailings that are there, grades about 0.9 gold and is something that we will process through the plant. And so the remediation of that is really all part of the economics of the development plan. And those tailings, that 4 million tons, comes at a 0 strip ratio, because they're right on site, or right at surface. So I think it's helpful from that perspective.
47:15 The other bigger issue is, because they ran this roaster, and this is before you had a lot of pollution abatement technology that was used. This roaster put into the environment, you know, what would today certainly be considered elevated levels of arsenic, because there's some arsenic in the ore. One of the things they did to mitigate that was to capture this arsenic trioxide as a, as a flue dust. So they'd captured in the roasting process. And so they stored that on site and they actually used to sell it as a wood preservative. And until 2000, a lot of, if you remember green treated lumber, and you're building a deck in the 80s and 90s, that was basically largely an arsenic trioxide solution, which was painted onto or put onto lumber as a preservative.
48:12 So that market kind of went away in the 2000s. And so we've been storing arsenic trioxide on site really since the 1950s. And that's stored in a concrete container, which looks a lot like a swimming pool. And ultimately that's well past, we think, its useful life. And so have a plan that we have presented and we'll move forward with, with the blessing of the Ministry of Environment to basically take that material, put it into Super Saks, put those Super Saks into shipping containers and have it appropriately stored. Over the longer term what happens with that material? There's still a number of different things that that we've tested that we know there are ways to to render it inert so that it wouldn't leach into the environment.
49:07 And ultimately, it's still got about 10 grams gold in that arsenic trioxide roaster dust. There's probably a way that we can recover some of that. So there's a number of different opportunities, but first and foremost, we just wanna get this initial phase kind of taken care of. And then longer term, there's also just the demolition of the other buildings that are there and the other old infrastructure, which it was all factored into the economics of the PEA, and I think is one of those things, again, if you had to do it today, it's a challenge. If you do it in conjunction with something that's going to generate billions of dollars of economic activity for the region, then I think it frames much more as a win-win.
49:54 I appreciate that context. One question from Steve Smith, it's a bit of a hypothetical. He asks, Could we not sell or even give away 50% of our exploration hectares to an exploration company, let them spend all the drilling costs and split any successes going forward 50-50? Steve, that's an interesting idea. You know, we've actually had some approaches on structures like that. Not so much at DuParcay, more around Springpole over the years. I think it's certainly something that as we're kind of looking at all of our funding opportunities going forward It's something that we will look at my my 1 hesitation on it. Is that you know that Exploration opportunity is depending on where it is, but that exploration opportunity is pretty important to the overall strategic value of the projects.
50:58 I can't tell you today what percentage of a value of Springpole is, you know, kind of the Springpole deposit and immediate environs versus the rest of our virtue G ground. But it's, it is important. I think when larger companies look at projects they want to partner into, having that, you know, generational exploration opportunity is a really important part of that. And I think you don't have to look any further than Malartic right now to see why that is. These deposits in these types of settings, we know, and with a gold endowment around them, both at Springpole and at DuParcay, you know that you are going to find more that you are going to be able to put through that infrastructure.
51:45 And once the infrastructure is there, those economic thresholds for exploration success are a lot lower. You don't need to find another 5 million ounces. Great if you do. And in both these cases, we think there's a very good chance that we can, but you don't need to. 500,000 ounces of higher grade is just fine. And that can go to make what would otherwise be an uneconomic deposit, something if you don't need to build any infrastructure, can make it really quite economic. So those are the types of opportunities that the bigger companies look at. But Steve, I think it's one of those things that we need to look at as options for all of our funding opportunities. I don't know that I would start with that on our main projects just yet.
52:37 I think we've done very similar things in terms of our partnership on Pickle Crow and on Hope Brook. I think with some of the other projects that we still have ownership in. I think that's probably a place better to start on something like that. But it's an interesting idea and one that we're certainly going to have discussions around over the course of the next months and years to come. I appreciate it. A couple more questions we're gonna get through but just for the sake of being realistic we're probably not going to get through all the questions today. I'll let everybody know if we don't get to your question we have your contact information and the 1st mining gold team will be sure to get back to you with an answer or some communication within the next couple of work days. With that out of the way, we'll get into the last couple of questions I wanted to go through. 1 from David asks, who's the head geologist on DuParcay? What projects have they worked on and are there plans for them to provide investors with a detailed overview of the project themselves?
53:36 We don't necessarily have 1 specific head geologist on DuParcay. Our entire team really kind of focuses on that. And that's been a big part of James Maxwell, our VP Exploration, and Caroline Pienaar, our main Exploration Manager. Super involved in the targeting and structuring, but really it's our whole geology team that works on both Springpole and on DuParcay. We've got some great team members that we brought on more specifically to work more on an execution level at DuParcay, and they're doing a great job. But really, in terms of the of the prioritizing setting of targets, the real geological interpretation, it really is our whole geology team that's there. But I think you raise a very good point And the short answer to that is yes, absolutely. We need to have one of these sessions, a webinar with James Maxwell and maybe some other members of our geology team to really walk our investors through why we are so excited on the geology front, both in the Bertucci and near Springpole and at DuParcay.
54:57 It's going to be a little bit more germane to the sneak preview of more drilling that we're gonna have at DuParcay just because we're funded to keep drilling there and we're excited to do so. But yeah, we'll absolutely get that in the calendar over the course of the next, you know, month, 6 weeks and make sure that we're giving the full picture to all of our shareholders here. I appreciate that and looking forward to having them on a webinar in the future. 1, I'm just gonna combine a couple of questions from Bob Ferris to Fen Mull about insider buying. They're Looking for your perspective on what the strategy is or when they could see or what they can expect in terms of insider buying at this time. That's a good question.
55:45 I'm looking right now at share prices like this. You've got to understand, as we have drill results and big PEA results like this, when they're in the hopper, the insiders can't really be buying. Now that it's been released, I think it does open that up. Listen, you've reliably seen Keith adding, you know, 250,000, 250,000 shares 0.25. You know, well, would I with the share price where it is now, would I be surprised to see Keith buying more? No, I wouldn't. I've been looking myself certainly at taking down and exercising a bunch of the RSUs that I have and then kind of looking at what the next kind of share purchase would look like. You know, all of our team has a lot of equity exposure, much of which has been purchased. You know, I myself have bought, you know, 5 million shares in the company already.
56:50 And at prices much, much higher than where we are right now. So, you know, I think, listen, I think it's an unbelievable time to be buying. And I think you can have some expectation that you're gonna see the insiders continue to buy here and probably at these levels step it up. All right, thanks. One question from Mika Kosovich asks, is the discount rate of 5% using the NPV calculation the current industry standard given the recent increases in interest rates? Yeah, that's a good question. The short answer is yes. It continues to be an industry standard, and we've been using 5% discount rates on gold projects since the 1990s anyway. And there is an entire body of work in the 90s when we had interest rates quite a bit higher than where they are now and in periods of the 2000s.
57:42 We still use 5% discount rates. It has a lot, anyway, theoretically a lot to do with, you know, gold lease forward curves and all kinds of other esoteric financial justifications. But for us, you know, looking at it as that in that benchmark, I think it still continues to be the industry standard. Got it. One final question from Adrian Cantwell, and you might have to call your lawyers for this one, but he asks if there are any NDAs in place already with respect to possible corporate activity. Yeah, suffice it to say, Adrian, we've had a number of discussions with a number of interested parties over the years. And, you know, it's important for us to continue to keep the industry up to speed and aware on the developments that we have. And part of it is the industry, at some point, we're very optimistic we're going to be able to turn some of this enthusiasm into potentially a strategic investment from a larger mining company.
58:50 Yeah, so I think it's an important part of us, A, getting external feedback on the projects and the resources, and that's always helpful. But B, yeah, ultimately in kind of where we might need to find some capital, that's an important source that we're always continuing to try and run to ground here. Perfect, thanks. Like I said, if we didn't get to your question, or if like me, you think of the perfect question right after the event ends. Please do let us know and we'll make sure the FirstMiningGold team gets back to you as soon as possible. But thank you, Dan, for taking us through the presentation and the Q&A session. I want to thank everybody who joined us, particularly those who submitted questions. And you can always find more information on their website at firstmininggold.com. But I'll hand it back to Dan for the final word. Well, I just again want to say thanks to everyone who's joined us today. This is, I think, a very important step in the evolution of the DuParquet project.
59:46 And I hope what comes across today is just exactly why we're so excited about where we've taken this project in a reasonably limited period of time, right? We all need to remember that we didn't close the acquisition it's been less than a year. I think we closed it on the 15th of September last year. We've owned the project really in its consolidated form for less than a year. And to be able to go from that to really demonstrating what we think is a really strategically significant development project in one of the most sought-after Gold jurisdictions in the world. I hope that comes across as it's a project that was well worth doing because we absolutely believed that it was. So lots more good stuff to come from here.
1:00:36 Keep your eyes peeled on exploration results. And yeah, we'll endeavour to come back in the near term here with some more excitement around the exploration opportunity at 1st Mining Gold. But thanks everyone for joining us. And if you have any questions, as always, you know where to get a hold of us.
