Increasing Land Position to 420 km2 Covering Multiple Targets

0:03 Welcome everyone. We are now live and I see people are entering the room. So thank you for joining us today for this live Norgenshield update with President and CEO Ian Bliss. Since we're live, please feel free to drop any questions in the chat. It's in the bottom right corner of your screen. And just note that this session is being recorded. So the replay will be available shortly after we wrap up here. Ian, congratulations. You've just announced a significant expansion from 32 square kilometers to 420 square kilometers. Can you walk us through what drove that decision? What are you seeing on the ground at Root & Cellar that gave you the confidence to move this aggressively? What do you believe this land package could ultimately become?

0:45 There are several reasons for this jump. First of all, things have been progressing very well at Root & Cellar, particularly since we started focusing a little bit more on the Creston Copper target in the middle of last summer. Obviously, we've been focusing mostly on the Gold, but we've always planned to bring the Copper porphyry idea up to speed and say that's paying dividends because we're seeing more and more mineralization as those cores have been expanded and more and more information is coming our way. Recently, as I said, we've probably pressed these beginning of February, sort of finding some Lead-Zinc mineralization. Again, these are often part of the zonations of Copper-Pore-Free systems, so it's just reinforcing the model is right. When you just see the Copper, which is what the main focus is, that's great, but when you start seeing all the other proper signatures to do a diatreme or porphyry system, it just gives you more and more confidence.

1:38 That story has been building up, telling us that at Root & Cellar, yes, we're onto something here, significant. We've always known about these other targets and then we started also understanding what we believe are the structural orientations that are important at boot and seller. We started expanding that, looking elsewhere in the Bureau. There were these known occurrences and then with the similar structural trends on those currencies that we understood. We decided it's better to snap up this ground now because we began to feel more and more eyes on us. We also got the impression quite clearly that there's other people poking around the Bering Peninsula looking for these porphyry Copper and Epicurm Gold systems. We didn't want to lose our advantages as a first mover.

2:24 We very much felt that people finally can understand that this may be one of the new porphyry Copper districts. We've always known it's there. A lot of other people have, but it's finally getting the attention it deserves. Even a year or so ago, when we were talking to majors and various others, there was a lot of interest in this portion of Newfoundland for these systems. And particularly with a lot of these bigger companies have a lower tolerance now to some of these other jurisdictions in the world. They want political security, they want their mineral rights secured and they want safety.

3:04 And here's essentially a brand-new heavy thermal Polfi Copper district. So I think finally, with what we're seeing at Root & Cellar, we're believers and I'm one of the people that understand these systems and begin to realize the significance of what we have and that it is a legitimate Porphyry Copper and Epitomal Gold district. We decided to jump on it before we felt pressure building, but we knew there was always happening and we just felt the timing was right as we were getting more and more confidence in Root & Cellar to nail down these other targets. It's a little bit like nailing down the half of the Golden Triangle in BC, where there's a lot of exciting results coming out in the last few years. This is the same geological terrain. It's a lot older, but it's the same geological terrain. And we think it's a matter of time before a significant intersection happens and a root seller or one of these other occurrences.

4:01 No, it's a smart move. So let's get into some of these targets, prospects, occurrences, whatever you like to call them. Let's start with the Stewart prospect. It shows a large advanced and the press release says, argillic, lithocat, with an anomalous gold copper molybdenum. What is your current thinking on the depth and size potential of the porphyry system beneath it? And what would it take to confirm that thesis? This is one of the prospects in the Bermudas. It's probably been worked the most. It's had a little bit of drilling by 2 different other companies in the past. It is the largest alteration zone. These are the caps that are basically interpreted to be the lethal cap, the alteration cap to a porphyry Copper system or high-solidation Gold. I'd say it's the largest one to date.

4:47 There are some big trenches on this property. There are 700m long trenches that have been dug in the past along this alteration cap, all anomalous in Gold, so 100ppb level Copper, hints of Moly, all the right alteration minerals that you're expecting to see. Some people look at these and say, 100ppb Gold is not that impressive, but you're not into the system. This is just the alteration where you don't really expect to see a lot of your elevated Copper and Gold, but it is a big Lithocat. How deep it is, how big, we don't know, but it's a big alteration halo and it may take time to poke around and find the sweet spot. What we don't want to do is go back and repeat what the other fast mining companies did, so we'll take a bigger approach to it, kind of learn or apply what we've learned at Root & Cellar and talk to others, particularly the prospectors in the area that know this area very, very well.

5:45 The depth and size, we don't know yet. It's certainly a big alteration halo. Same at Point Rosie, lesser known, but there's a big alteration system there. Never really been any systematic or hypothetical year-by-year

5:59 exploration on those targets. I think probably early on, the approach was we'll fly an airborne survey, not necessarily magnetic because it's already been flown by the government, but we may look at an airborne MT or ZTAM survey, which is really looking at resistivity. So you're looking for your cores of your Copper porphyry systems or Gold systems. We'll run a big regional airborne survey over the property, try to 0 and see if there's any targets that stick out like a solar thermal right off the bat to 0 in on, but otherwise it's going 50-point Rosie and Feeder Creek to do some systematic more soils, mapping and sampling and understanding these alteration systems and then figuring out that the geology is a little bit more complex in that area, whereas Root & Sill is very pristine and upright. It's a little bit more folding and deformation in that area.

6:53 But again, there's a lot of big alteration systems here. Many of the viewers may have seen, you go to the websites of These people working in the Golden Triangle, BC, they all have these pictures where the top of the mountains are all rusty zones. A lot of these rusty zones are not what they're tracking. These are the alteration caps. We see the same thing in the Bermudas Peninsula, Newfoundland, only we have more 2D exposure, 2D rather than 3D that they have in Risi with the mountains. But we have the same very large alteration systems and we don't think they're all barren. Like underneath there's bound to be a proper system. It's a matter of systematic exploration and probably the first step is going to be an airborne survey just to see if anything lights up, as you say, underneath these operation systems.

7:44 Some people might find that the PPM isn't that significant, but at 40 Creek, it has some high-grade Gold and Silver telluride values and grab samples. How does this fit into the broader structural and mineralogical model you're building for the fortune property trend? Again, you see, like at Rutan Seller, epithermal Gold systems and porphyry Copper are related. I mean, the porphyry Copper are typically deeper and then as you get near a surface, and I'm talking about the Peso service because these things were formed 500 million years ago, the Gold would have been closer to the surface and usually off to the side. Sometimes the Gold will be on top of the Copper porphyry.

8:27 40 Creek is high in Gold, Silver and Tellurium. This is a typical signature, we call it intermediate sulphide Gold. It's your epithermal Gold, not the most distal one, which is low sulphidation. You're now moving closer above the porphyry. The model makes perfect sense that it's related to a Copper porphyry. Whether that Copper porphyry is right underneath Stewart or whether it's nearby, that's where you stick the bigger land package. But it makes sense to see those very high-grade Gold veins. That was discovered by following up on the Copper porphyry system at Stewart years ago and then they found these Gold-bearing veins. It's similar to Point Rosie that was initially thought to be an alteration zone with very, very low Gold values, but one of the prospectors has been in there and very diligently started finding actual quartz veins in cutting the alteration. Again, low-grade, 0.6g, 0.9g per tonne, but they are proper veins and they're carrying the mineralization that you, and the styles of mineralization that you would expect to see in a pore-free epithermal

9:31 district. And so, none of these things, When you're seeing the alteration cap, you're not into the heart of it. The fact that we're seeing Gold and Copper around these systems is a very good indication. These are big alteration systems, each one of them, Point Rosie, Stewart, and then we're starting to find one at Feeder Creek and there could be lots in between. And so this is literally a whole district that we've acquired. Great. So I'm assuming a lot of investors are wondering, since you've gone from 32 to 420 square kilometers in a single step, how are you thinking about prioritizing exploration across such a large and varied land package? And what does the work program look like for the coming field season?

10:17 Well, I, you know, We're still planning that right now, but I think the initial step will be an airborne survey over the new properties, Fortune and also over at Cape St. Mary's, just to try to highlight anything obvious. Geophysics is this one tool. It's not always a smoking gun result that you get. It's just a tool, but we'd like to use that to see if there's anything to 0 in on.

10:42 It varies from project to project because within Fortune Property, you have Stewart, which is a little bit more advanced, but we'd like to try to bring the other ones up to speed, Point Rosie and Feeder Creek. We feel in those areas, there's opportunities to go in there on the ground and simply with some more prospecting, very diligent prospecting, but find more grades on surface. So we'll get people on the ground right away just to try to, again, based on the structures we've learned from Root Seller and applying them on a regional scale with what the prospectors have found, 0 in on certain areas and sample those. And that will be followed up by a more detailed regional till sampling program. We know that worked very well at Braxton Bradley, which we announced a few weeks ago, so very good Tellurium Solar Gold results from occurrence within Moon Settlers.

11:32 So till samples work very well generally on the Burren, not in every area, but they generally work very well. But initially airborne, getting people on the ground, we've got a good group of prospectors that we've auctioned these properties from and there's others in the area we're going to mobilize them to get out and try to get some results. Unfortunately this is a very very snowy year in eastern Newfoundland. I think just last week we had a meter and a half of snow here in St. John's, a little bit less in New Buren. It has been a snowy season, it usually goes quickly. And so hopefully end of March, mid-March, not April, we'll be getting people on the

12:09 ground to sort of focus in on certain areas, both on the Burin and also the Cape St. Mary's target to try to come up with some results, focus prospecting based on what we've learned from Root & Cellar. Great. I'm going to take an opportunity now for people that just entered the room to remind them to ask questions. We do have one from James here, which I think makes sense to ask right now, with his well-thought-out sentences here. When drilling, when drill results estimation? So the first drilling is obviously at Root & Seller. The other projects are still a step behind from that. So, these new regional projects need some groundwork first. The next phase of drilling will be on the Creston Copper target at Rutan Seller. We're trying to get that done late spring, but with the snow and geophysical contractors being busy, that may be pushed back a little bit. The idea is to get a drill program on Creston late spring or perhaps early summer, but Creston will be the next target for drilling on the order of a 2,500m to 3,000m programme.

13:21 We're keen to start as soon as we can, but it's probably going to be sometime in the late spring. With drill results, again, that's lab dictated, but usually there's a 4-week to 6-week lag time in that. But we're sampling all the time there. I'd say the results from the visual observations of the Lead Zinc mineralization in that area should be in soon and we'll be back there again as soon as the snow goes, doing some more sampling. But drilling is planned for hopefully sometime in the mid to late spring. Now, in the press release, it was mentioned that the prospectors you've partnered with are your first asset. Can you speak on these relationships, how they're structured and how you plan to leverage their on the ground knowledge as part of your exploration strategy?

14:12 Yeah, these are very sort of, I don't want to say loose, but they're just agreements that we have. We've known of Jeff Brushett, the prospector who found Root & Cellar is well known in the area. There's some other ones, the prospector geologist that we optioned Point Rosie from. These guys are very, very knowledgeable And the Burin is not well explored compared to other areas of Newfoundland. So these guys, they know the rocks. They don't always know the names of the rocks, but they can describe them extremely well. They've been over the ground a lot. I mean, both Jeff and the other prospector, they each have about 30-years' experience on the Buren. So they've seen a lot of the Buren and they can take you to where they've seen alteration. And so they really are the first asset because there's not a lot of other, I mean, the survey has been slowly building up a technical database on the Burin, but it's these prospectors that have been

15:08 walking around the Burin for decades and they are the first asset and we're trying to mobilize them, giving them a little bit more incentive. Obviously, we've optioned some other properties, but even those that we haven't optioned, we're working on agreements to

15:25 help motivate them to get out there and prospect these new grounds. They're all local. They're keen to see something develop in their hometowns. They know the land better than anyone. It's very important to talk to them and take you out and show them their stomping ground. Now, you touched on Cape St. Mary a bit, but I have a question here. The Cape St. Mary claims present an interesting dual target scenario of both porphyry copper and potential magmatic Nickel-Cobalt sulfides. How do you approach a property with 2 distinct deposit models and which would take priority in early stage work?

16:12 I said that we're probably going to run an airborne survey there. Now, typically for Nickel you're running an airborne EM survey, whereas that's not going to be very helpful for porphyry. But an airborne MT, which is really looking for resistivity, which is what you want for porphyry, will show the reverse. It's also going to show something very conductive. So That type of survey will still be suitable for pulling out the Nickels or we'll run some sort of airborne survey. That will hopefully again give us something to key on, whether it's Nickel or Copper porphyry, perhaps there's both. Specifically, in 1 area there's more of a porphyry signal, in another area there's both. But otherwise, you've certainly got to get on the ground. I mean, we know that when it comes to Nickel, there's the right rocks, these gabbros and other mafic intrusive rocks.

17:00 The Buren or the Avalon is not classic terrain for magmatic Nickel-Copper. That's why the beginning is like, okay, let's not get distracted. But there's no doubt when you look at the till samples, Nickel-Copper-Cobalt, there's a magmatic signature there and there's the right rocks to host magmatic sulphides. It will be running an airborne survey and if you see any strong conductors, focus on that. There will be prospecting, further till sampling, prospecting the creek. It's a little bit of a harder area to work than the beer room because in some areas they are more low-lying and they get a little bit boggy, so there's not as much exposure there as you do have in the beer room, but it's simply a matter of getting on the ground. And again, it's an area that's seen very little, even less so than the beer room, systematic exploration. So There is the opportunity of simply going there, booting them and prospecting and coming up with some results.

17:55 We saw the Copper-Till anomalies. We were very attracted to those for the porphyry potential. The Copper, you see the Copper with the Moly and even Lithium, so that's a classic porphyry style signature, but then there's also the Nickel Copper Cobalt. These till samples are the same sort of strength and clustering as what the prospector used to find the Queston Copper target 10-years ago. These are Government till samples. We have a very similar signature. We know what we found at Rumseller by following up on those. We feel that is legit and whether it's for free or Nipple Copper or both, we don't know, But the strength and clustering of those anomalies strongly suggest that there's a bedrock source underneath those claims.

18:41 The interesting thing too, from the magmatic Nickel Southwide point of view, is you have the Foytie Bay smelter at Long Harbour, it's just 70km away up the peninsula. It's a nice location if you were to find Nickel Copper. Now, during your intro, you mentioned people are looking for safer jurisdictions now, given what's happening all over the world. With corporate porphyry systems, rather, they're also attracting significant capital globally right now, given the copper supply outlook. How is Northern Shield positioning itself to take advantage of that investor and major company interest? Well, that's again, that's one of the reasons we've increased the land position is majors and even big institutions funds. They like big land positions, even though you don't need a big land position if you have something like Moon Seller, they always like big land positions.

19:37 We didn't want to stake big land positions to have a big land package. That's why we're very selective about amalgamating these known occurrences that prospectors had and identifying the trends that we think are important to controlling some of these mineralization. That's the other side of picking up the big land position was, we know there's interest here for a variety of reasons and big companies like big land positions. That's part of the reason too that we went to acquire these things, but it was strategic land acquisitions and not just blanket staking. It very much was understanding that big companies like big land positions. Great, well thank you for the update. Congratulations on the news Ian.

20:24 If you guys came in a little late this is being recorded our team should have it up shortly after we conclude here. Before the call you were telling me you are attending PDAC and will have a booth. So why don't you go ahead with any closing remarks that you're in before we sign off? Thanks so much, Kyle. Yes, we will be at PDAC booth 3037 for any of you that may be attending. We'll have many of the rocks. In fact, the prospector just dropped by half an hour ago with some rocks that he physically collected from the Creston Copper target. So we'll have those there at PDC. But yeah, we think this is a very exciting time. I say just on Root and Seller alone, The story has been building quite rapidly in the past few months, and especially with this increased land package, I think we're all going to draw more attention because it's finally waking people up to the porphyry potential of the Bermudense on Newfoundland. Most of these porphyries again are found on the Pacific Rim and this is a legitimate porphyry district now on the Atlantic seaboard, so greater access to the European markets if that's important. So It's essentially a new porphyry district, very easily accessible.

21:35 A lot of the stuff is accessible by road or ATV trails, yet it's never been explored. And that's our wheelhouse is under explored regions and that we get the benefit of great access. We think it's a very exciting time. Multiple projects now to work this summer, so a lot of new flow coming, both on prospecting and as soon as we can, a drill program on the Creston Copper target. So that's the one that's really driving the intention right now is Creston at Ruben's Heller. Great. Thank you so much, Ian. Thank you for the update as always. Until next time.