Transcript
Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
0:07 I'll say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. While I always love talking to FirstMine and Gold CEO Dan Wilton, who is with us today, I'm thrilled to be able to also sit down with some of the geological team and get into some more technical details than we often do on these calls. Before I let them introduce themselves, I do want to do some really quick housekeeping. First I'll say the event is being recorded and should be available this afternoon for Replay. Today's event is also interactive, so I'm going to be leading off with a few questions just to introduce
0:37 James and Caroline, but then we're eager to take questions from the audience. So in the bottom right of your screen, there's a little chat box. Please feel free to ask questions at any time during the presentation and we'll get to as many as we can towards the end of the event. That's enough out of me. James Carroll, I'd love if you guys could introduce yourselves to the audience. Let people know your role, your background and how long you've been with the company. I'll let you guys pick who goes first.
1:03 All right, well, hello and bonjour. It's James Maxwell here. And thank you, Romeo. I'm the vice president of exploration and project operations with First Mining Gold. I joined working with the team at First Mining and its projects about 2 and a half years ago now. So well settled in. And I'm a professional geoscientist working largely focused in Canada over the last 20 years.
1:27 Hi, everybody. I'm Caroline Pinar. I'm the exploration manager with First Mining Gold. I joined the company in December of 2021, soon after immigrating to Canada. Being based out of Vancouver, predominantly worked in the mining industry since 2010 for a company called Anglo-Volta Shanti prior to coming to Canada. Awesome. Dan, while you're free to introduce yourself, of course, what I would love for you to do here, because I know there are people in the audience who aren't as familiar with First Mining Gold's story. So also, as you introduce yourself, give a little quick synopsis of the company and its projects. Sure. Thanks, Romeo. I'm Dan Wilton, the CEO of First Mining Gold. I've been with First Mining for about 5 and a half years now, joined the beginning of 2019.
2:16 In those 5 and a half years, we've made significant progress in both consolidating and advancing 2 of the largest undeveloped Gold projects in Canada. It's really our main focus, advancing our Springpole Gold Project in Northwestern Ontario. And really since September of 2022, at the same time moving forward, our DuParquet Gold Project in Quebec. Again, 2 of the, really 2 of the 10 largest undeveloped Gold projects in Canada, making major advances towards real milestones. We had a good discussion last week around the permitting process around our Springfield project. You can find that on our website if people want to get more detail on that. But what I'm so excited about today, and it's something that I don't think has really resonated in the first mining story.
3:16 And a part of that is just really because, until a few years ago, really until James and Caroline joined, we didn't really have a team capable of driving the exploration, understanding, and success of these projects. And I think what we're so excited about now is, and James and Caroline will talk about it, this is the result of years of work and kind of developing geologic understanding. And now we've had our hands on these projects for a while. We're really starting to see the fruits of that exploration work in new discoveries. Lots of new discoveries around Springpole and the Burch Uche region, and most recently at DuParcay last week. So very excited to give these 2 a chance and give all of our participants here today a chance to hear James and Caroline talk about what is I think really the third major pillar of leverage if you're a first mining gold shareholder.
4:18 We always talk about we've got large resources. You get leverage to the gold price through large resources. You get leverage to the gold price because your entry price is so cheap right now. But that third part of the leverage really is that leverage to discovery and resource growth. And that's what James and Caroline and their teams really drive. So I'll turn it over to them. I'm excited to hear this too. Awesome. And my first question to both of you and Caroline, I'll start with you if you don't mind. Obviously you had a storied career, you mentioned working at Anglo Gold Ashanti, but prior to joining First Mining, what projects of note did you work on and how would you say Spring Pool and DuParcay compare to them in terms of size, resource, growth potential, infrastructure, etc.? All right. Well, again, coming from quite a mature mining background, I kind of started on the other side of the mining value chain, you know, with producing assets.
5:11 Anglo Gold Ashanti is one of the top gold producers and they've got a portfolio of projects ranging from everything from, you know, development, exploration through to producing assets. So for me, working in that environment and in the various roles I've filled over the years allowed me the opportunity to work with a lot of these operations and projects and supporting either directly or indirectly some of the work around the resources, finding opportunities to grow these resources,
5:44 and then just also constantly in a production life cycle feed it, you know, to extend that life of mine. So a lot of my work as a geologist, as a geoscientist, and, you know, working with these projects was focused on either developing those programs, executing on those programs. And a lot of that is, you know, what I can offer and bring to First Mining in terms of how we look at these projects. And again, coming from the other side of the value chain and knowing where it needs to go and what you need to do to get to that point in order to grow this resource on both these projects. And then, yeah, I think that's predominantly it. I appreciate that, and James, with the advantage of extra time to prepare, same question to you. Oh, excellent. Well, certainly, you know, I can speak to my history being well aligned to the projects of First Mining Gold and definitely one of the things that attracted me to the company and its team.
6:41 My exposure really is working in Canada on Archean Gold projects, which really is the premier host of operating Gold projects in North America, ideally, certainly Canada. My history goes back to working in the Red Lake Mining District. I operated an exploration office there for approximately 10 years, so very familiar and local to the area and working around the spring pool deposit environment. And similarly, I worked with Sabina Gold on the Back River project in Nunavut now owned by B2 Gold. I spent 12 years advancing that project largely from, you know, a second cycle of exploration
7:20 through a number of discoveries, economic studies, and then into advanced text and pre-construction. So great familiarity in the operating environment of the project profile we have. And then just in terms of scale and size, I mean, these are the projects that really have that attractiveness for success. You're dealing with multi-million ounce projects that have critical mass is what we'd call them, at attractive grades from an operating and producing environment in the Canadian threshold. And then the bigger part of that story, and the passionate part of that story for me is really that prospectivity of not only advancing and developing these critical masses, but the opportunity to explore for extensions, satellite discoveries, brownfields exploration, greenfields exploration. And, you know, our projects have all of that. And that's an important metric for success. And certainly what drives my passion is, you know, moving these projects to that next level, which is development
8:15 and exploration discovery, which is growth. Awesome. Now I know a lot of the investors in the room that are watching, while there are sophisticated mining investors, sometimes the actual geological knowledge might be a bit more limited. So what I'd love if you could both do, and James, I'll start with you, in as basic terms as possible, I'd love if you could just give a description of both Springpole and DuParquet and why these deposits are good hosts for golds. From a layman's perspective, what makes sense about both these projects? Yeah, and it leverages well what I was speaking to with the host setting. These are hosted in Archean terrains, which is an age of rock. The Archean age is an older generation of rocks, but a time when the affinity for gold deposition and hosting in these events was quite prominent and it's quite well known, especially throughout Canada, areas like the Red Lake Mining Jurisdiction, the Abitibi Mining District, which is where First Minings projects are.
9:17 Both these projects have an affinity for an intrusion related source. So
9:23 we certainly, you know, in Springpole, we have an alkaline intrusion that has a porphyry to epithermal style deposit. And these are well known and validated around the world. They're somewhat a bit rarer in the terrain that this exists in, in Northern Ontario, but for the most part, it is probably one of the preferred bulk mineable, moderate grade deposits around the world. Certainly, we value Springpole in its uniqueness, but also in its ability to be benchmarked as a deposit class that's proven quite successful. Similarly for DuParcay, DuParcay is hosted in a cyanide intrusion. It's again an intrusion-related deposit that occurs in both cyanides. We'll be talking today about even the contacts of the cyanide, where we see it manifesting in mineralized volcanic material.
10:11 Certainly, again, these deposits, I think what makes these intrusion-related deposits special is that typically they can attain significant scale and size and have good grade and continuity. So that's important in the metrics of success, especially for modern mining. I think you'll see today there's a kind of a modern class of deposit and a lot of the intrusion related metrics fit that. And so for examples, you're dealing with environments like Malartic, environments like Hemlo, which benchmark is very sizable, long lived generational deposits. And we believe SpringPool and DuParquet have those attributes, which will be an important part to their, not only longevity, but the success of the operations themselves. I appreciate that. And Caroline, if you have anything to add, please do.
10:58 Just what's special about the projects? I think I'm just adding on to what James said is that first mining has also consolidated a lot of tenure across these districts and these regions and speaking to that extensional opportunity we've got a lot of space to grow out and build these projects and we're doing that We are demonstrating some of that work in what we're doing. DuPont-Qué has everything up in Northwest corner where the main resource is going down to Pitt and Duquesne. And it's 19 kilometers of strike of exploration space and opportunity with demonstrated
11:32 resources along that path. So quite exciting and lots of space to grow as James highlighted. Yeah, and location, location, location. I mean, you got to remember you're in these prominent districts. I mean, We really believe the Abitibi is probably one of the cheapest places to explore in Canada. It's close to infrastructure. We have more drills and mining equipment coming through that project than I would suggest that any other project in Canada. You just can't replace that in terms of location. Similarly, the Red Lake Mining District has a great history, a number of operations, and new discoveries, I think is the other piece. You see these continual mature districts. There's a reason they're special, and it's because they host a lot of gold endowment. They have a long history of mining and there's constantly new revelations, new discoveries and new relationships that are driving them forward throughout some of them over a hundred years now.
12:27 Great. And I do wanna zoom in on DeepRK specifically. So I know Dan, right off the top of this presentation, you mentioned you come out with drill results relatively recently that do look extremely encouraging. I'm going to quote you from the the news release, so pardon my Dan Wilton impression, but the higher grade zones of these exceptional widths of DuParcay clearly demonstrate the ongoing resource potential and what is already one of the largest established resources in the Aptopi Greenstone Belt. I'd love just to, you know, from the geologists' mouths themselves, if you guys could talk about those most recent results. Caroline, I'll throw it to you to start. Yeah, again, like something exciting for us to put together. We're really excited to share these results and actually going to share my screen a bit more here. Let me just quickly get over to that So we can all see those results and reflect back on them.
13:19 So yeah, this is the results of our North Zone target. We started drilling in this area in the winter of this year.
13:27 We had a key strategic holes coming across this target And this sits to the north of the main resource. And as you can see in this plan view map over here, highlighted in that yellow ellipse, is essentially where the target area is. And it refers back to what James said, where we have this change in lithology coming across from the cyanide to the volcanics.
13:51 So hole 18 was one of the first holes that we drilled into this target. It was testing the higher grade trend that we've sort of delineated by integrating a lot of our geosciences, re-looking and revisiting a lot of the historical information, and then just integrating all of this together. Then we pushed out and stepped out along that target. We drilled hole 22, which you can see on the far east over here. And on this long section, it's where this far right yellow star is. And a great target for us as well, or success, sorry, in that hole, because it also returned, you know, 2.47 grams per tonne over 7 metres outside of that main resource.
14:37 Again, bringing all of that information in-house, digesting it a little bit more, looking at these trends again, hole 24, of course, the highlight, and you can see by those multiple yellow stars over there, where we intersected multiple mineralisation across the whole of, you know, 10.67 grams per tonne over 5 metres from 448
14:58 metres down the whole, 6.63 grams per tonne over 9 metres at 476 metres, the 3 grams over 35, sorry, 33 metres, and then lastly the 5.97 grams per ton over 33 meters. So quite meaningful results and then all of this as we've highlighted in this news release as well outside of the main cyanide and into the volcanics which traditionally wasn't the main focus of this area.
15:29 Yeah and I'll just take a bit of a step back and talk a little bit about what we've done and how we got here while we appreciate, I think, the metrics of these results. I do want people to know that as an enthusiast in exploration and an enthusiast around mining project advancement, we're in tune with a lot of different projects and results across the board, but you know, you're always looking for these meaningful intercepts and, you know, updated news where you really believe that there's an unlocking or there's some critical results that really show mind ability. And I think, you know, that's kind of where we've gone and what Dan's speaking to is that, you know, You put this type of intercepts and numbers on the board and it becomes really real quite quick. You can build ounces and tons, given all things reflect and come together for the project quite quickly.
16:17 That's what these intercepts deliver today. So a bit of how we got there is really by spending a year characterizing drill testing concepts, studying the geoscience and integrating in our approach. So this is something where we've spent a
16:31 year developing an early foundation of models, working with predecessors' data, a great investment in about 270,000m of historic data that we've derived and modelled through lithology, through structure and alteration, which is that integrated geoscience approach that's important. Then we put about 10,000m into this through phase 1 and 2 over the last
16:56 12 to 14 months. A meaningful amount of drilling, not over the top, but certainly something that's going to allow you to start to understand the environment. So we spent that first 10,000 meters, you know, vectoring around the opportunities for growth, which, you know, include 3 categories. You know, we've got this grassroots discovery opportunity. This is the Abitibi where new discoveries happen all the time. We've got the brownfield setting where we've got some of these satellite and extensional opportunities. And then we've got that resource growth and optimization. And this is kind of a balance between the brownfields and the resource optimization where we're really starting to put these things together. We're taking that first 10,000m of drilling, we're taking the models, we're taking some of the geophysical approach and the geochemistry approach and we're driving it towards where we think the best value forward growth is going. Then we're stepping back as we start our phase 3 now, it's like, where are these areas resonating? And there are a number of them. And one of them certainly includes
17:53 the down plunge and a long strike and down dip extensions of the North Zone. And these numbers speak to that. So we've worked to understand the system. We've worked to understand the opportunities around the system, and I think where you really want to be in June with a project and potentially even partially a part of that project through other mechanisms is really when you start catching your stride. This is that opportunity. We've done those early years of the Lausanne curve of understanding the project, consolidating the land, working on that early stage of study. We're now in that trajectory where we're going to start to grow. And not only is the exploration momentum in terms of our opportunities growing, but we're going to start picking up the pace on this too. We feel that we've got some unlockings here that are going to allow us to drive that exploration value. And I think one thing you'll continue to see now is, you know, continued growth, continued news flow. We're drilling today on phase 3, we're back at the North zone doing these great things. And, you know, we really have kind of a real system of categorizing and prioritizing, you know, where we think the best fit is.
19:07 Awesome. Dan, I'm going to get you in here actually for a second. What I'd love you could talk about, in clear terms, why should investors be happy about these results, 2PARQA? Well, listen, I think what the team has sort of modestly not said is that these are exceptional results, right? It's very rare that in 1 hole you can see these many different zones of mineralization.
19:36 I think what this, this as a snapshot, it's important, but what's more important is what this gives as an indication of where the growth can go. And as a result of a couple of years of work in understanding the deposit for that to come to this, I think investors can look forward to more growth there. The reality is a lot of people forget when they're looking or investing in exploration stories, a lot of these projects, big exploration stories, aspire and will never get to deposits of the size that we have at Springpole and DuParcay.
20:21 That's just a fact. There are very, very few deposits in the world that are larger than 5 million ounces.
20:31 I think that's something where putting this in the context of already sitting beside major multi-million ounce resources, demonstrating the ability for those to grow in real district scale exploration packages where we got a number of other shots on that that we can take. That's what is really strategic about these resources, in my mind. That's what this exploration really demonstrates. We've often heard the story, you've got 3.5Moz
21:07 of M&I and another 2.5Moz of Infer to DuParcay. Do you really need more ounces? And the answer is yes. You always need more ounces. Every ounce that gets larger further distinguishes these as really unique projects. And, you know, tacking into higher grade zones, I mean, you know, James has been the one who said it, I'll steal his words, but, you know, 33 meters of 6 grams, Those are the kind of intercepts that mines are built around, you know, that large continuous mineralization, and particularly in a new host setting and something that really opens up the playing field for us to better understand where we're gonna find more of that higher grade mineralization can give an entirely different
21:58 perspective on the development plan at DuParcay. If you start introducing, what does this look like if you can, like we showed in our PEA, if you can feed this from underground. But you've got to remember our underground ounces in our PEA were averaged about 2.2, 2.3g. It was relatively low-grade for underground. You start looking at what that production looks like if you are mining, you know, 5 and 6 gram material. It's just, you know, obviously that much more economic. So very interesting. And so much, I mean, just demonstrates there's so much open space at DuParquet to give that runway to get from where we are now to it's honestly, it's not at all a stretch to see 10 million ounces at this deposit.
22:47 Now I do have a strategic question I want to zoom out and throw to Caroline and James. How do you select targets? What criteria and technologies are important to you? Just looking for your, you know, what strategies you employ.
23:03 Yeah, I think from our side in terms of technologies and things that we use, and James did mention it a little bit earlier, is we look at multiple sources of data, everything from geophysics to geochemistry, collecting field data, and then integrating all of that into what we would call a 3D geological model. The important thing there is it's implicit modelling, it's a modern way of understanding how to integrate all of this data. And it allows us the opportunity to go back and pull out certain things. And that was some of the levers we could pull to start delineating these higher grade trains. So I would say in terms of innovation, it's that, and then of course, just bringing in the geoscience component, having that fundamental understanding and drive in terms of asking the why it's there, how come it's here, how do you build this out, and what does it mean for the project going forward?
24:04 Yeah, and I think on top of that, I'll add to that, Caroline, I mean, the other part that bends into that is obviously value and prioritization for the mining chain itself, whether that's for the exploration resource growth, whether it's for the optionality of the development footprint of the project. We really are doing, as a more junior explorer and developer, we're doing senior level exploration. This is an integrated approach and Fortunately, the Abitibi affords us a lot of great freedom in the exploration expenditure category where we can do the oriented core work. We can do the multi-element and whole rock geochemistry. We are putting that all together to drive towards what are these higher value and growth opportunities. And so, we're looking for hundreds of thousands of ounces in extension, hundreds of thousands of ounces in discovery.
24:56 And ultimately, as Dan said, on top of 5 to 6 million total resource where we've got 3.4% indicated and 2.5% inferred. We're really driving for meaningful growth. We're looking for targets that can deliver greater than 10% exploration growth because we've got a great inventory, we've got a great endowment and we're going to continue to push on the exploration metrics. We think these zones certainly can take us there and they occur at moderate depths for the Abitibi. We're only working in that initial 4-500m
25:30 vertical realm at this stage And we're planning to push that down further. But this is part of that de-risking. We're working at the fringes and edges of where the extension opportunities exist. And you can see in our phase 3, which is the green stars, is that we're really going to be pushing forward on the North Zone. We're going to be pushing forward on some of our other targets, which includes Buzz and Volentrae, as well as some of the regional discovery targets that our field teams are working up now. It's really about delivering the value, but through an integrated approach, which we feel is something that is important for us to make sure that we, you know, we're not just out there guessing. I mean, we're really putting the work together to gather the geoscience and then delivering with the drill bit, you know, on a variety of target spectrums. Right. I do see there's tons of great questions in the chat. We will get to it soon. Just before I jump to SpringPoll, I did want to give you guys the opportunity just to define in broad terms, to summarize what the goal is in terms of overall strategy at DeepRK.
26:28 Either of you can start. All right, I'll give it a first update, so to say. So highlighted quite a bit throughout our chat this morning. You know, it's not just focusing around the main resource and what we can do for it, but it's building it out and what we can do to grow this project. We've got this beautiful 19 kilometers of stripe with lots of opportunity. And we've done the geophysics this year, like newly integrated data. We're expanding that model to cover the full property. We are driving, and I can actually switch over to you. Maybe we can advance the slide. I think. Yeah, we can probably do that.
27:10 So we're moving quite a bit of this forward, and you can see over here what our model expansion looks like and how we're using that to drive some of these regional targets and how we come up with them. On this bottom map, you can see the yellow stars, those are some of our field targets for this programme. And this year, we're continuously drilling. We've got another 9,000 metres to drill through to September, just building out on that. And as James said, we're focusing some of the Valen trade buzz and of course, an all-zone target follow-up. So lots of great opportunity for this project and the focus over the next, you know, 6 to 12 months in terms of where we can go with this. And we're looking forward to what our Summerfield program is going to deliver on the regional side as well.
27:56 I think that in the bigger picture, you know, the exploration context, you know, again, it really is about value through growth. But, you know, in the bigger picture, you know, we did deliver a PEA last fall. We're quite proud of that PEA. It validates and benchmarks a great opportunity for a future mining operation at DuParcay.
28:14 We've taken some time to work with that now. We've worked with where we feel the best parts of that are. We're looking forward on how we can potentially optimize the open pit operation proposed within the PEA. We're looking at how we can optimize the underground component. And then we're looking at how the consolidated project approach, some of the satellite opportunities and other facets of exploration discovery fit into that. It's really about project optionality, it's about large-scale endowment in the resource, and I think that's the attractiveness of this project. It's the location, it's the opportunity, the optionality, and the fact that we're really got ultimately a year or 2 into this project now, which is where you start catching your stride. Awesome.
29:00 Just before we get to all the audience questions, I would be remiss to not ask about Springpole. Now I imagine, you know, many viewers are aware that the project's in the permitting process, but you're planning to submit the final environmental assessment in September, I believe, of this year, which is exciting. But while I've got Caroline and James, I'm curious, what about drilling? Is there exploration happening near the main deposit at Spring Pole? And what are plans for further drilling?
29:25 Yeah, so at Spring Pole, I mean, we've steadily advanced over the last number of years, both characterization of the Spring Pole deposit setting and extensional opportunities, as well as additional brownfield discoveries around that. Similarly to DuParcay, we've taken a great amount of time in understanding the environment, characterizing the targeting and prioritizing it forward as well as the regional. So, you know, there we've consolidated a large land position as well around a critical mass, which is Springpole, 4.6 million ounces of indicated and 300,000
29:57 ounces of inferred. And certainly again, the endowment speaks to the opportunity. So For those who have been tuned in, we've developed some great drilling targets with some initial results around the saddle opportunity within a very close proximity of several hundred metres, the Challenger opportunity discovery from last year. Right now, we're in a readiness approach where our field teams are still collecting further data. We're re-logging a few holes and then setting up for drilling what we would hope to accomplish in the later half of Q2. It's really where that's going is a readiness front. Again, it's that time where you want to be tuned in. We've done the homework to get ready from the geoscience and exploration approach and it's really about speaking with the drill bit now and so that's the what we expect to come is starting to turn on those opportunities. We haven't forecasted any starting dates yet but certainly are gearing up our teams. We're talking to the various parties needed, and we're looking for a successful approach to drilling at SpringPool.
30:56 Great. Caroline, I don't know if you have anything to add. No. Like I said, we have our teams in the field and they're doing the data integration, collection and waiting for the assay results to just continuously build on these targets. Awesome. One last thing about SpringPool before we get to audience questions. I'd love if you, Just for folks who don't know in the audience, if you could give a brief synopsis of the land there. If there's been previous mines, previous drill successes in the region, it would be great to get a quick synopsis of that. In the broader picture, this is in the Red Lake Mining District. Don't forget, there is 100 years of history, 25 million plus ounces produced over the lifetime of the Red Lake Mining District. We're in the Bertucci portion where we've seen recent successes around Red Lake in the Confederation Belt, south of Red Lake with Great Bear.
31:50 We have an endowed opportunity here with Springpool and there's a number of historic producers, you know, from earlier generations though around Springpool, But it's just one of those later districts to open up to exploration and that's the opportunity. We've really, you know, unfragmented the area. We've got a great center of operations in our exploration site that is well managed by an internal in-house team. And, you know, we've got a great indigenous component in our operations team there and throughout the company and truly work hard to try and create value for this region. So from a Springpole perspective, I mean certainly it's very much within the wheelhouse of the Red Lake Mining District which has a storied history. It's in proximity to infrastructure with the road and power network, recent upgrades to the power network in the north, and certainly a lot of opportunities for infrastructure enhancement that can be, you know, alongside spring poll we're happy to work with area stakeholders to ensure that there's a positive benefit, not just through exploration, but through the advancement and development of the deposit itself.
32:54 Great. I'll leave it to Caroline or Dan to have any final summary on SpringPoll before we get to the very good audience questions that I'm reading in the chat now. No, I believe that was a good summary. Perfect. Well, thank you. Thank you for that then James. So I'll get into audience questions. I know WCW Warren, you've been waiting patiently a half hour to get this question answered. So I'll start with you. It's a question for James, says a technical comments. What understanding does DuParcay's 24-024 illustrate about this Multiply Gold Zone? He offers is a Bertucci Challenger grab samples. Sorry, can you repeat just the latter part of the question? You're kind of mixing 2 things, I think. Sure. The first part of his question is, what understanding does DuParcay 24.024 illustrate about the Multiply Gold Zone?
33:41 Yeah. At DuParcay, there's a tremendous opportunity here. I think one of the key aspects is the grade profile of some of those intercepts, the host rock opportunity of some of those intercepts. For people who are passionate about exploration in the geoscience approach, what we interpret is that we identify this being in a mafic volcanic host. The DuParcay deposit is largely historically modelled and written in disclosure as being a cyanide body, which a big part of it is. That cyanide intrusion has a global grade endowment between 1g to 2.5g, but Our threshold for exploration is about those high-value zones and we know that there's potential for 3g plus material around Duparquet. What we've done is really started to refine where we think these things can be hosted. The Mafic volcanic, high iron, high Titanium volcanic is one of the things that we've been targeting.
34:35 That is a successive model around not only the Abitibi, but furthermore in these Archean terrains. When you get these, what we'll call preferred host rocks in these endowed structural Gold deposit settings, I mean, you can actually have grade multiples. And that's what we're seeing in this latest hole 2424 at DuParcay is that we're not getting the global average grade DuParcay numbers. We're getting broad zones of elevated grade at, you know, up to 5.97 and there's inclusive material well over 10g per ton. What we're seeing is that we're seeing host rocks that have a better opportunity for sulfidation, a better rheologic contrast, and it's returning higher grade mineralization, which includes multiples. So we're going from a global grade of 1 and a half and we're producing intercepts that are now 3 grams per ton, 6 grams per ton and inclusive zones that are 10 and 12 grams per ton. So you're talking about multiples on grade and as well with that solventation, you're also getting a lot higher density materials. So there's things here that are manifesting in the exploration that are really positive for exploration success. And these are things that are happening at Holloway Mine in the Lightning Zone that are happening in other areas of the Abitibi where people are attracted to these higher grades.
35:53 And James, I think just important to give people a bit of a sense of, you know, we talk about how this is different than what's been there in the past, the understanding in the past, just some of the exploration bias that we've seen at the project or that you and the team have uncovered at the project over the last couple of years. Yeah, and I think that's True. So probably some greater than 90% of the drilling across the DuParcay project has been in the cyanite horizons. This is the Abitibi where volcanic and sedimentary and ultramafic stratigraphy is really a big, important part of the success regionally. Ideally, that's part of our opportunity too, is just driving the fact that we're allowing ourselves to break down that bias and explore for wherever the Gold might be. I think that's part of the success, really stepping outside the box, reinterpreting the opportunity, and then spending the time to not only study it, but deliver with the exploration drilling side. You have to go out there and not only come up with these great ideas, you have to test them. I think that's what we're trying to show now, is that we're being successful in this approach, and that's not gonna stop because we're prepared. We've done the work, and now we're really going to be taking it to the opportunity.
37:13 Awesome. And a question from John in the chat, directed at Dan, but everybody feel free to provide insight as well. He's looking to elaborate on the status of the starter pit at DuParcay that you talked about in the past. He also wants to know about the possibility of gold extraction from old tailings there. Just wants to know where we're at with that and what the timelines for achieving those items is. Well, John, thanks for the question and great to hear from you as always. We're working on understanding this starter pit potential at DuParquet. It's one of the things you talk about location, location, location. At last count, which I was updating my list yesterday, we have 17 mills either operating or on care and maintenance within 200 kilometers of DuParcay, right? That's the benefit of being in the middle of the Abitibi as we are.
38:13 So, That's something that we continue to investigate. Is there an opportunity for us looking at a higher grade starter PID to look at other processing options that might not involve us immediately building our own plant to DuParquet? That can obviously simplify operations quite a bit, utilizing existing infrastructure, existing tailings facility. So, you know, we're working up right now, John, in terms of the timeframes there. One of the things that is important that you mentioned, an important part of the development plan at DuParquet is processing those historic tailings. You know, that's, I think part of the reason that this is such a compelling development opportunity for the community, for, you know, for the province of Quebec, is that you have a chance to use those tailings and put them through a new plant. We know that the Gold recovers out of those tailings. There's been decent test work done on it. I think we need to do a little bit more, but those tailings are an important part of our resource. It's about 4Mt, grading about 0.9g.
39:26 That material can't travel very far. It's not high enough grade that you're going to truck that somewhere, but with a plant that DuParcay, it certainly was an important part of the mill feed in our PEA study as well. We're working on the timeframes there. It's something that we should have some more news about going forward. And the plan that we're looking at would likely involve something, you know, sort of a transition potentially from toll milling to building, you know, potentially a smaller facility onsite at DuParcay. So more to come on that. Work's ongoing now and we should be able to give a little bit better sense of definition around timeframes, hopefully in the not too distant future here.
40:19 Great. Kerry from the chat asked, and this can be to anybody who's here to answer, with the extended drilling of both projects over the past couple years, he's curious why the indicated and inferred totals have not been increased to show the advancement of discoveries. Yeah, I can take that on. But, you know, ultimately, you know, what we want to do is really, you know, establish, you know, these stronger areas of growth. I think there's more value for us today in establishing where we can point and direct meaningful growth than really spending the time fully drilling these things out to resource. And I mean, in a more rewarding market, I think if you saw people being credited for resources and resource growth, I mean, we certainly would be right there. And I think that's the goal. Like I would love to be there.
41:06 I would love to have 5 rigs turning on these things today. But the environment is not that. The environment is more leading towards that readiness strategy again. And part of it is like, we are pushing to make sure that when we get to that stage 2, we have ultimately enough targets to keep moving that forward. We're having a lot of discussions of when that turning point is. The results we're talking about today are a big part of that. It's going to open up our ability to increase the pace, which we are reviewing. We're looking at how we can move on this faster with more rigs. And so, yeah, I think it's an important question. I think we're going to get there. Don't believe that we're not going in that direction. It's certainly something that's going to take some time. But for DuParc in our first year, I think we're establishing a number of nucleuses that we're active on in phase 3. And we're going to look to pick up the pace on that. And we're hoping the market picks up the pace too. We really hope that we enter a breakout environment that allows us to get more aggressive.
42:06 But we got to be ready too. There's this moment here in time where you can waste resources, you can waste funds if you're not prepared to do the work. And so from a managerial side and working with Caroline and the team, we're doing everything to uplift and make sure we grow at the right rate too. We don't wanna get too far ahead and find out that we can't facilitate the work effectively. So it's a responsible approach, But just hang tight because we're getting there. We got some great things happening and we're gonna start pushing on it harder and harder as we go forward. Great, I got one question directed for Caroline. Warren from the chats, curious on the managerial side, what exploration differences are you encountering from Africa's mining industry where you got previous experience? Well, it's a completely different world for me and coming to Canada was, first of all, quite a big shift and change.
43:00 But on the managerial side, I want to say there's quite a lot of similarities at the same time. Africa is a diverse country. South Africa, where I predominantly started, I always say has 12 official languages. Just there, it talks to the diversity. I had the opportunity to work with the teams in Ghana, Tanzania, Guinea, and then when I moved to the Johannesburg head office, the international team with South America and Australia come on as well. So having that opportunity to work with a diverse culture and bringing that to Canada, which is also pretty diverse, was, was quite easy to sort of like integrate and work with the team. Lots of learnings in terms of, you know, I want to say South African ways of doing things. I often get joked around with my tendencies.
43:54 But I think, just again, working with the team and ensuring there is effective communication and just constantly getting that check in with everybody is important. Moving and working in Quebec has also been a challenge. Again, French is not one of those official languages in South Africa, so it's another thing that I have to learn and work with. And it's also just making sure everybody understands what the direction is, what we're trying to achieve, there's buy-in. And I just want to add, I think one of our other pieces of success is like we've established the core team, and this core team has grown with us and coming through this project. And we all work along pretty well. And I think everybody rowing in the same direction and understanding what the vision is just helps to push things like this along.
44:42 Great. Timothy from the chat asks, He says, for the last few years, there have been several times that predictions of elevated M&A activity were around the corner. He says, although there's been some, I'd argue a bit more than some recently, but he says the predictions have yet to materialize. So he's curious if you have Any thoughts as to why this is moving slowly with prices where they are in the industry? Well, listen, I'll jump in on that one. I think we've had this period where, yes, gold prices have gone up. I think there was a lot of uncertainty around cost inflation and what cost inflation was going to look like, how that was going to impact profitability of Gold miners. And particularly, you always have to remember for projects like ours, you're kind of, you're long CapEx risk, right?
45:36 By definition, if you're gonna build a project, you're gonna have to incur some CapEx. And I think we've seen larger projects be disproportionately punished over the course of the last couple of years because the financing environment has been a challenge. There's been concerns about capital and operating cost inflation, are your technical studies out of date, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's part of it is that there hasn't been a real urgency for producers to move. That urgency is changing. Right. And it's changing from a couple of different perspectives. You know, if you were sitting, 5 years ago and said, okay, well, listen, in our 5 year strategy, we'd like to own a project or a mine in Canada that maybe it's built, maybe we could be building it.
46:22 5 years ago, you had 7 or 8 almost shovel-ready projects in Canada that were all about to start. You fast-forward to the end of 2024, which by the way, is only 6 months away. Those 7 projects are largely built and commissioned. These are major Gold projects that are going to produce in excess of 150,000oz a year, many of them in excess of 200,000oz a year, many of them billion-dollar projects that's taken to get built. A lot of those have just been bought or partnered and taken off the table over the last 5-years. In fact, of the largest Gold projects, you look at what were the 17 largest, 7 gone, so now there's 10 left. Of those 10, how many of those can actually be permitted and could actually go into construction over the next 5 years.
47:21 That's, again, a much smaller number. So there is a real scarcity factor that's coming in. At the same time that you had, you know, 3 or 4 years of companies generally not replacing their reserves, maybe they're exploring, on the margin they're adding, they're dropping cut off grades, dropping cut off grades will allow you to kind of replace your reserves. That's continuing to happen, will continue to happen this year. But that's a mug's game. Like at some point you get to the end, you haven't found more gold, you're gonna need to replace those resources. So we've always said from, you know, 2019, when I arrived here, the goal is to have the projects ready when the industry needs them the most. And I think we have a really, really unique opportunity with these 2 projects to execute on that. So do I think we're going to see an increased pace of M&A activity coming through the end of this year? Absolutely.
48:18 I think there's still some consolidation around mid-tier gold projects, which is gonna happen now, honestly, that share prices have come off the bottom for producers. And there's a lot of people, you know, management and boards whose options and RSUs are going to make them a lot of money now, not to be too cynical about it, but I was an M&A guy for 25 years, like, I'll tell you what gets the deals done when the boardroom door is closed, and it's often self-interest. So I think you'll see a couple of interesting, larger companies created. That's gonna free up some capital to come down market. I think you're gonna see, and we're starting to see some of those producers who have projects rolling off at the end of the decade, getting more aggressive and realizing they are going to need to build projects.
49:05 If they don't build them, the things that are for sale that they might be able to buy are often old and pretty tired and challenging assets. Stephen Dean I think, has said it perfectly at Artemis that the only way you're going to get a low cost mine these days is to build one. It's got to be a new one. So that is turning from like development is all risk to development is opportunity. So with all that long winded way of saying, I think we're going to see a much more robust M&A market, not least of which because the producers are belting out free cash flow at $2,300 plus gold. Sure. Now we've got time for a couple more questions, but for folks in the chat, if we didn't get to your question, I'll pass them on to the FirstMining team.
49:53 You can always reach out to Paul Morris. His email address is paul at firstmininggold.com for any questions. He's very good at getting back to people, so he'll make sure he addresses your question. But we do have time for a couple more, so I do want to throw out 1 from Everett. Asks, what are ETAs on the next round of feedback on the environmental permitting for SpringPoll? Next round of feedback. Well, You know, Target is obviously submitting the environmental assessment in September. And then there's a lot of feedback that comes in stages once that's submitted. For more information on that, I would point you to the webinar that we did last week, talking about this exact topic. Everett, lots of information in that time we spent with Steve going through that process and some of the milestones we'll hit along the way.
50:41 Perfect. I'm in from the chat. Really, I think to summarize their question, I want Dan, for you to compare First Mining Gold to First Majestic when it was at the same stage. It's interesting. First Majestic evolved in a very different fashion in that Keith originally in the early days of First Majestic really picked up near-term producing mines, often small things that they thought they could grow, establish that production base and then grow from there. It was a very different strategy of growth, whereas first mining in the early days was really all about resource amalgamation and collection.
51:27 And then we've kind of had to figure out what the path is going forward from there. So there's not 1 right or wrong, obviously. There's a lot of times over the last 5 years that I wish that we had cashflow, but we all recognize that smaller cash flowing or smaller mining operations can often struggle to generate free cash flow. So they can introduce other risks as well. I think, you know, the ultimate productive capacity of the mines that we, or the projects that we have, put it in a very different state, you know, you get a couple of these projects built you know and I think you've got a value of projects that is equal to or greater than the value of First Majestic. It's just shepherding it through this process to move it down that path. And whether we're doing that building ourselves or they're bringing in partners, I mean, I think we've been very open about, we need to understand what all of the options are when we get the projects a little bit further. But now I think First Majestic is a great company, but it was built really with a series of smart incremental additions.
52:45 And we've been, I think, slowly executing on that same kind of incremental additions when you look at, for example, us consolidating DuParquet. And I think the 3 of us on this call here today are pretty happy that we ended up consolidating that ownership at DuParquet. I think it's given a very different and very, very exciting opportunity to our shareholders. Great. Before we wrap today, I'd love to bring back James and Caroline. Just ask what you're most excited about for the rest of the year and going into next year. Caroline, we can start with you. Well, certainly more of these kind of results as a start.
53:30 But I think for me, what's most exciting is we've got this path, we've got this pipeline of targets and areas that we want to push on and develop on. And working with our team and everybody growing, not just as individuals, as a team, but on these assets as well. I'm looking forward to that and I'm looking to further testing and validating our exploration approach in terms of how we understand everything from DuParquet to Saddle, Challenger, Spring Bowl, Spring Bowl East and all of these targets. So lots of opportunity, lots of diversity in what we can take on and then leverage the strength of everybody in our team to push forward. Awesome, James, I'll throw it to you for what you're most excited about. Yeah, and it's quite similar. I mean, it really is the growth, but I mean, it starts with, you know, getting pointed in the right direction in terms of value, and that's what I'm excited about. I really think we've done the work, you know, we've grown the team, we've spent a number of years getting this core together, that, you know, you're start to going to substantiate that now with results and results are going to drive that value. And Dan talked a bit about the market dynamics and the M&A activity.
54:42 But realistically, I mean, we really are positioned now to start leveraging all aspects of these projects towards a value add. And that's for the company, that's for the shareholder. And I think, you know, that's what I'm excited about is to really start seeing the smiles, really start seeing the small wins turn into big wins. And, you know, certainly, you know, growing with this company I mean, it's been exceptional in our first 2 to 3 years in our approach, but we've really grown a great, diverse, and talented group of people that are going to continue to grow with us. We're going to continue to add to that portfolio of talent. And you're going to see the projects grow, which is gonna be immense because, you know, when the market really respects, I think what we're putting together here, we're all gonna be very successful and we're all gonna be very happy together. So that's kind of my perspective on the end of the year run here, it's turning up the temperature in all aspects for shareholder growth and value.
55:36 Awesome. I'm tempted to end it right there because it's a great way to wrap up, but Dan, I will leave it to you. See if you can top James for what you're most excited about for the rest of the day. And I can't because that was very, very well said. I mean, I think, you know, our shareholders and people on the call just reflect on the number of explorationists that ultimately bring it back to, you know, things that are a core focus of our team. All of what we are doing here is building value. And it is one of our core values is respect for our shareholders, respect for their investment. And we've had to make some very conscious investments in exploration here in a time when it doesn't really feel like it's being rewarded.
56:23 But that's going to change. And let us never forget, this is still the gold business and that can change with 1 drill hole. And I would tell you with 1 drill hole. And there's, you know, I would tell you that if we took, we took DuParquet 24-024 and put that in a, you know, in a company that had no other assets, that alone would have a 50 million market cap, maybe more, right? Like that one drill hole, you just got to remember everything else that we have around it. So now I'm incredibly excited about, you know, a number of things, but, you know, We so rarely focus on the upside of these projects that we have. We talk a lot about de-risking. We talk a lot about advancement. But this is the real blue sky upside value.
57:13 I really do think James and Caroline and our exploration team are on to something here. The great truth machine of the drill will demonstrate it over time. But I think If this is the start of what we're starting to understand about new exploration horizons at DuParquet, and we're able to demonstrate some continuity and that we've kind of cracked the code. It's already, I think, one of the most strategic projects in the gold industry, but only further cements that. Awesome, well, Caroline, James, thanks so much for having me and Dan thanks for joining me as always. This is great for those in the audience, appreciate your time, especially to ask questions.
57:59 Everybody have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks, Ramiro. Thanks, everyone.
