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  welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing news.com we're here at VC in Vancouver and I'm speaking with Robert eford CEO of Ru gold hi Robert nice to see you again nice to see you again so since we last talked New Zealand was just starting its mining policy overhaul what's the update on that yeah New Zealand is uh off the radar for so many mining investors especially um but as of the start of 2024 they they did three things to really promote investment in the mining

industry they one came up with a critical minerals list uh of which antimony is on there which is prolific in our in our property uh secondly they completely reformed the resource management Act made it much more streamlined simplified and then thirdly and most importantly they actually passed some new legislation which went into effect in December last year and that takes the permitting time for a mine down to six months and so you've got two gold companies going through that stage right now oana gold and Santana minerals both

have brand new mines that they're building and they've started that permitting process which takes 6 months so that's leading World in terms in terms of timeline really exciting time to be there yeah and great uh news for your project could you talk about your project refton Goldfield what makes it a compelling investment sure yeah I mean Reon is on the south island of New Zealand it's a orogenic style deposit so we're talking highgrade gold in in in courts veins and we actually just had

some news out this morning uh we've completed more drilling we've got three drills turning at the moment every single drill hole we put in keeps coming back with visible gold so it's really encouraging we're having early stage success and we're just at the outset now so we've got a huge drill program planned for this year and in 2024 we actually took over that whole reef and go field through a mix of of acquiring land freely but also through some some pretty strategic m&a that we completed

and now we hold that whole Reon District at least 95% of it and we're exploring it in its totality so a very good time and and to see that much visible gold this is a past producing area so we're not hunting for whether there's gold there or not it's a question of how much gold is left over right and I one of the most interesting uh I guess exciting things that's happening is you're Embrace you're embracing artificial artificial intelligence in your exploration um and that investment seems

to be paying off could you talk a bit more about that yeah completely I mean it's it's early stages at this point we've partnered with verify AI um verify have been in the mining space for a long time and they've always been technology leaders in the mining space um and they've got this AI product that they've recently rolled out and we're just in the onboarding phase so as I said we we had this 2024 year where we got lots of land and we acquired our neighbor so we tripled our land package we had a huge

data set there we've done 5 years of historical exploration work they' done over 5 years of work Oceanic gold have been in this area there's historical mining in this area from the 1950s that the government digitized so we've got this data set which is close to 100 GB and so much information and so by putting it in this AI tool and again we've just done the onboarding stage and now we're in the AI learning process where we run scenarios and iterations but even in that onboarding stage we

started seeing these these high highgrade targets these high prospective targets come out and it pulls out Snippets of information and it's highlighted a drill hole ocean I did over 15 years ago which was 92 g a ton over 27 M so it's it's an astronomical drill hole it wasn't done by us but it's on our property and and now we know that that's our first Target and we'll be drilling that Target by the end of January so what do you hope to accomplish the end goal um you know with

your adoption of AI um well yeah 2024 was a formative year of just getting the foundations in our land in order by partner ING with the AI tool with verify and by having a heavy exploration Focus for 2025 we hope to finish the year with a strong m definition and and that's really what we're focused on now it's a drill drill drill through the year get that news out to the market and close the year with a with our first M and you've started talking about that so uh for 2025 are there other um any other

upcoming catalysts the investors should look out for so the south island is really a drill store and so investors need to watch for those drill results I mean that's what creates value in the exploration space that's what we'll be executing on but we can't forget about our North Island asset it's called Glamorgan and we've also recently tripled the size of our Glamorgan asset it's gone to 15,000 hectares now and the importance there is the neurology story to Oceanic Gold's wkp deposit that's

currently 1.4 million ounces at close to 18 g a ton again these deposits in New Zealand the geology of New Zealand is unreal and and unmatched so you've got the government behind you now pushing for more mining you've got mineralization throughout the island that hasn't been touched and in Glamorgan in the North Island we're just getting going so that's an earlier stage surface exploration work being done there now to then Define where our drills are going to go and then we'll be

drilling there at the back end of the year make exciting times ahead thanks again Robert for taking the time thanks very much for having me thanks and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another edition of CEO insights if you like this video like or leave a comment below we'd love to hear from you and if you haven't already done so subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive interviews and updates