Mawson Gold (MAW) - Building Gold Resources Globally for Mine Builders

Mawson Gold is a gold exploration company in 2 safe, mining-friendly jurisdictions: Finland and Australia. They are expanding the most advanced gold-cobalt resource in Finland. An inferred resource estimate recently doubled to 9Mt @ 2.1g/t gold, 570 ppm cobalt, 2.5g/t gold equivalent for 716,000 ounces gold equivalent. Five diamond drill rigs are planned to drill 20km from December 2020.

Interview with Michael Hudson, CEO of Mawson Gold. We last spoke to Hudson back in February when they were starting off a process of raising some capital.

Company Overview 

Mawson Gold is a Toronto Main Board-listed company. They are a Gold explorer and are exploring in their own right in a number of jurisdictions with a focus on a resource-based project in Finland that has gone from a new discovery to a growing resource and is their flagship project. They have the Victorian Goldfields, in the shadow of Fosterville and a few other projects around the world in Queensland, Australia and in Oregon.

At Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia they have 60kms of strike along strike from the Cannington mine, which is 1 of the world’s largest Silver deposits. It has produced 5-10% of the world’s base metals and extends at least halfway undercover as it does outcrop. They have been funded 50% over the past few years to do some geophysics and they defined a very big gravity anomaly.

In a post-Covid world, the Queensland government offered it to a number of companies to drill that gravity anomaly. They funded AUD$200,000, which was 95% of those drill holes to test that target. The assays are in the lab at the moment so they are awaiting the results. 

In Oregon, Mawson has a joint venture with the largest landholder in the US. They have 150,000ha of a new geothermal field. That company is drilling there now, and has to spend CAD$1.2M to earn 80% of the project.  If that project doesn’t work out for them, it will come back to Mawson who will find a way forward with the landholder. 

Mt Isa, Queensland: Objectives & Data

At Mount Isa, they could find the Cannington style, which is a broken hill-type deposit, or an Iron oxide, Copper, Gold, deposit which there are many of in that part of the world. The drilling has opened up a part of Mount Isa that is true virgin territory. They now have a university involved and have got to build up the geological story to determine whether they should be spending money there in the future or not. 

They're spending AUD$10M from the start of July ‘20 to end of June next year which will be broken down into AUD$7M that will be spent in Finland, AUD$3M in Australia. Finland is the flagship project in that respect, but it's a project that needs a lot more drilling because it is resource-based and increasing resources all the time with further drilling.

Victorian Goldfields: Time, Money, Effort, & Results

They have spent about AUD$2M in Victoria so far. and have collected a lot of the base data so by February they should be able to say where they are going. They have upwards of 5,000m and completed ¾ of the geophysics on areas that have never been looked at. It is comparable to Red Castle with 17km of veins and they have found 40,000 workings over an area of 6x6km. They have put out some results from Sunday Creek and have some discoveries there already. They have drilled 10 holes and have put 3 out so far and are awaiting results now. 

At Red Castle they have drilled 12-13 holes but they are shorter holes and are waiting to put that together before putting results out as a full and comprehensive release on Red Castle in January.

Finland Project: Achievements, Timeline, & Goals

Mawson doubled the Finland project resource in September, based on drilling they did earlier this year which brought them to just over 700,00oz Gold equivalent. 14% of that is in Cobalt and the rest is Gold. They will be drilling some of the high-grade trends and have put out some very good numbers earlier this year: 20m at 15-20g-type numbers, but they need more drilling to determine the continuity. They understand the structural geology and the controls, but have to prove it to themselves and the market, so will be going back into those areas and drilling. They are also adding the high-grade ounces because they’ve started to drill those bodies down deeper but they need to focus on building ounces too.

They would like to be permitting the project earlier rather than spending AUD$100M exploring it. It is going to take a number of years because there are a few limitations around this project. It is winter drilling, so they can only drill in winter for biodiversity reasons. If they can double the ounces that are shallower at the high-grade parts of the system and start permitting towards mining, it will always get bigger, but de-risking it via a permitting process is more valid earlier than later and that is what they are doing.

Mawson has started an EIA process which could take a couple of years in Finland and is essentially a socialisation with all stakeholders and looks at the impact it's going to have both positively and negatively and how they feel about it. At the end of that process, which is another 2 years drilling, they will have to make a decision whether they start to engineer a project and permit that engineered project, or continue to make it bigger.

The resource is growing and currently has open-pitable resources at 2.5g/t, but there's around 500,000oz if you used a cut-off grade of 4.5g/t free Gold. The Cobalt is not an economic part of the project, it’s more of a by-product, but it's the government rock and will help get the project permitted out of Helsinki.

The pros are that the project is heavily supported by local communities, municipalities, the Village associations, the Regional Land Development Council, the majority of MPS in Lapland. They’ve had a lot of EU money spent on the project over the last couple of years and Finnish public money because it's a new discovery and it's exciting for Finland, but it's also got this battery metal, which brings more attention. The Cobalt makes this a very strategic project for Finland. The Finnish State mining company has been granted €450M in post-Covid recovery funding to build out the battery supply chain in Finland, of which they're already heavily entrenched.

Mawson aims to have a 1.5-2Moz project in Finland with the potential that it could go larger to 3Moz+ and will be going down the permitting route. 

When we last spoke, the Mawson share price was at about CAD$0.34c and they've seen some highs along the way from where they started the year as they had some great drill results at the beginning of the year, and continued to deliver those in both Finland and Australia. They have an AUD$10M drilling programme planned in Finland for the first half of next year, and are looking for more good drill results to create the excitement to give them the value they need.

They are fully funded and and are looking forward to the year ahead which could be a turning point for Mawson Resources.

To find out more, go to the Mawson Gold website.