[Music] welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn dezman with investing news.com I'm with Sean heinr president and CEO of 1911 Gold Corporation hi Sean hi great to join you thank you thanks good to have you so the company has outlined its 2025 growth strategy for the true north uh project talk about some of the key components of that strategy and how they uh increase shareholder value sure certainly so without getting into the history of the project one of the key things about 1911 is the fact that we


have uh all the infrastructure on site so we've got an operating permitted Mill permitted tailings facility Camp infrastructure and we have three underground mines with an existing 1.1 million ounce resource so what we've heard from our shareholders over the last several years where we were largely focused on more Regional exploration and working up areas on the Belt was that look you really need to focus in and drisk your existing assets and see if you can build uh a proper mind strategy


around the the resource you've already got and see whether or not that can work and if that can work you're going to become a completely different company and then from there you can really start to scale out into the regional footprint again so that's what we've done over the last probably 24 months we've kind of reared ourselves some of it was forced on us we had to make some hard choices over the last couple years uh our tailings re we retreating tailings up until about 2 years ago so the mill was


operating quite recently but that kind of ran its life cycle and we we decided we really needed to focus in on the resource and see what we can do and the steps we can take to get back into production so that's what we've been doing started in 23 we brought Gary o Conor on as an adviser initially he's now on the board as an executive chair uh we brought on a really skilled uh geology team which has a much more development focus in terms of their skill set and around that we've started


to add ideas and drisk the assets so last year was all about rebuilding the resource tearing it down to the bare minimum uh and rebuilding it up inspecting the core finding all the original assays making sure all the data hangs together and then getting putting new estimation uh techniques around it based on kind of updated requirements and seeing whether or not that 1 million ounce resource hangs together it did uh we were able to build proper mind shapes around our resource shapes I should correct myself around that around that


model and put together something that we can really hang our hat on but out of that exercise really came the identification of opportunities within the M lease foot print um so from from there we were actually able to build uh an exploration strategy starting on Surface starting Drilling in a couple of key areas building up new targets uh within the footprint and that's something we started uh late last year so now people are looking at us and they're seeing the news releases over the last couple months and they're


seeing drill results coming out something we haven't had for a couple of years and these drill results are all on areas that are close to existing Mill infrastructure around areas where there's historic mines or close to Historic mines but they're new um they're different areas where the sheer veins intersect the same favorable host rock on our property and that's the key finding areas what have not been thoroughly explored or drilled but actually have very strong similarities


to the existing mines that were that are already there which which have existing resource so we're going to continue to advance that strategy over the remainder of this year uh we've got more new Targets in the pipeline uh we're actually kind of returning to the West Target recently uh which we put drill results early in February and we're continuing on the Southeast Target because we really like what we're seeing there we put out a news release last week but we're liking the the trend that


it's following we think there's potential for it to connect to areas uh down at depth so we need to do more uh we need to get underground and start follow that one down as well as well as the West Target we can get into underground uh but then we've got a couple other ones in the pipeline that are still close uh and they're just again going back to those where do those eastwest Shear veins hit those favorable host rocks those are our targets uh so we're going to get into those as well on


top of that we are focusing on getting underground again so we're commissioning the as shaft uh we got the Hoist ready to go we're waiting for permission to send a crew down there we'll inspect one of the levels that gives us great access for drilling uh that's coming over the next few months uh and then in the also in the background we've got a mine engineer coming on board we're going to start doing internal scoping on the on the mining side and see what kind of Economics we can put in there in here on


the back on the back of all this work and see what kind of mind plan we can come up with so we can start talking hard numbers and put realistic uh time frames around a return to production and and see what kind of profile we can build around that that's a busy year ahead uh sorry a busy few months so last year in November you've um released an updated mineral resource uh for for your project and then subsequently filed ni 4311 how do you plan to leverage these uh I guess you've covered it a little


bit but expound on that um to advance the project development I did I I got to jump the queue on that but yeah no that really that was the hidden intention behind the resource rebuilding obviously validating the resource we had because we were getting no value for it in our share structure or in our market cap but really kind of driving our exploration strategy because that really helped us identify you know the way this mineral way the geology Works um and where to look elsewhere on the property so that


drove the kind of drill plan that we've got going on right now so it was a benefit uh what it also did was it identified areas where we could go in and we could do infield drilling because uh we did we uh Shrunk The the drill spacing on the old resource we lost resources that were used to be in the inferred but what I did was it created open areas that we can go back in drill off bring those resources in and increase the overall size of that resource so getting underground to do that part is going to be pretty


important for us um but that was the main part about the about doing that exercise and also giving like I said giving us credibility for a resource something that we can defend we can put our hand on our heart and say this is a real resource um and and it's you know something that our geology team was intimately involved in putting together so that kind of a two-pronged uh approach and it gives us the benefit of something that a mine engineer can come along and start putting some real numbers around so I want I want to get


your uh I guess insights you know with the gold prices remaining strong um how does 1911 gold plan to leverage this uh you know Market opportunity and attract more investors to be able to advance uh yeah I I put out a note in January to that effect it was like our strategy was to try and get back into production regardless uh or at least go down that path and that was when gold was like 1900 and 1800 which is still great good prices that's us um now we're obviously at 2800 2900 us 4200 Canadian and our


plan just makes so much more sense all of a sudden um we built the model that was defendable at those lower prices but at these higher gold prices it's basically put a big wind at our back which is you know evident in the way our share prices moved uh we're getting a lot more attention uh and to be honest our plan really is to just you know look there's clearly an interest uh and momentum in the gold sector um it's trickling down to the Juniors um particularly those that have real


projects um and that are slightly more advanced which I think we fit into um and we're going to just push hard while we've while we've got that momentum behind us we're going to keep going regardless of whether the not the market turns but this is this is the opportunity for us to do things with the lowest cost of capital possible in terms of investing into our exploration plan investing into the development um and progressing this project as far as we can go and if we can get close to


production uh you know things start to get a little bit easier for us because you can attract new types of capital uh again that all just feeds into a lower cost uh of what you're trying to do because you're able to tap into larger pools uh of available financing and then can start eventually looking at other types of you know non-equity financing that are out there once you've got a real defendable mind plan and you know you know you have a good handle on what your uh what your numbers are going to


look like so that's that's where we're going obviously we're trying to increase our visibility a lot this year we've got uh markets that we have not spent any time um getting into and showing the story too and so Gary ok' Conor who's who's working with me a lot um and myself uh are going to be very active this year there's going to be a lot of work a lot of geology work a lot of investor facing type activity and you know we'll just keep pushing ahead on that front yeah I wonder if that has


that um you know with this continuingly strong gold price is that accelerating your to be take able to uh take advantage of that right accelerating your time plans or your timelines and stuff like that is that has that influenced that at all uh look I'm I'll be cautious and say it really hasn't it's obviously given us more confidence in what we're doing but the worst thing we could do is try to race back into production without having done the homework um you know we have a really


good idea of what went wrong with this asset back in 2014 2013 um the mistakes that were made uh the mining methods that were chosen in order to boost productivity but didn't really fit the fit the geology and didn't fit the uh fit the way those mines work we've we've got a good handle on that uh but to race back into production now my my concern would be make a few mistakes along the way um that doesn't mean to say that you know we've been pretty explicit about what our time frame is um and we're


going to push along that time frame and if there's opportunities to do things faster without you know having to do say the what we think might be the wrong thing then we will do that uh and we do kind of pursue and evaluate those options to us there's near more near surface um opportunities around the site which is part of the reason we're doing a lot of the surface drilling um that may enable us to accelerate the time frame without you know increasing the risk um to us as a company um but you


know we were already kind of going along this path on what we think was a fairly aggressive um but at the same time you know prudent time frame and we're continuing along that same strategy so over the next you know several quarters will continue to put out news we'll continue to progress the scoping and then ultimately try to get out you know additional progress updates in terms of uh engineering reports and those types of materials as well but yeah and you've covered a lot of uh you know coming


Catalyst but is there anything else you'd like to add like you know that investors should watch for uh the company over the next uh the near term I think in the near term look it's going to be a series of updates with respect to where we're drilling the targets we're drilling why we're drilling them what we're seeing in them and why we're exploring them because sometimes with our asset you can get something that's narrow high grade and you're like what are you doing and


you're like well look this is narrow high grade but it's it's extending a depth this area here and this is a this is an or body much similar to Red Lake which is like 100 km to the east of us you know there's areas that pinch and swell and pinch and swell and as you get down these can grow significantly and they continue at depth for quite a long time and that's why you know we Chase these targets if we can put several drill holes and we can trace between those drill holes and get confidence in


the continuity between them it's a it it could be a potentially a very big uh Target for us as we get back into the underground and start drilling it off uh below surface as well so those would be the types of catalysts uh you're going to see out of us you're going to see us talking about we're underground now we have access to these areas uh we're excited about this we can here's the targets we're looking at underground that we we're going to be drilling um and when we're there um we're going to


have to make some decisions about where we start and where we go but once we're under there it's going to be an extremely productive uh and aggressive drill campaign um to start to advance and infill those resources towards the end of the year like I said we we would hope to have some kind of uh details out with respect to you know an update on the resource I'm not committing 100% to an updated full support yet but we're going to look at those things and we're going to advance those things we're


going to look at potentially having some kind of PA out at some point um you know those are those are the targets we need to focus on just to keep ourselves disciplined and keep ourselves moving this project forward so those those will be the things to keep your eye out but regardless we're going to be very busy uh we're going to be very active and we're going to do as much as we can in terms of being transparent as to why we like these targets where we see them going what's the potential behind them


and why you should be excited about them so that's that's what we're going to be focused on and if something's not working we'll walk away from it very quickly because we've got lots of other areas we can be looking and and uh get drills into basically oh great conversation thanks again Sean for taking the time to speak with me no problem it was great to meet you and it was great to have the opportunity to talk to your listeners thank you and thanks everyone for watching join us


again next time for another edition of CEO insights [Music]