welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with Inn I'm speaking with James Tor CEO and director of element 79 gold hi James hello so I want to talk to you about uh it's a lot has happened with the company for the past year um do you want to take us through sort of some of those milestones and what um what are the some of the main initiatives that are under way right now sure thing thank you um we're we've pivoted from a company that has been uh basically a portfolio amalgamator and we've de


bested of the majority of that portfolio over the last year so we had the sale of the assets to Sentra and we're still hearing that they're moving forward towards their IPO um they're in the process of completing their 4311 right now uh We've started the process of doing a spin out of one of our assets which is uh the Dale property that was our original listing asset and uh it's no longer cor to our future Focus so we found a buying party that wants to take over that Holy owned subsidiary that we


can move that asset into and that process is coming through we expect in the next week or so to be completed with the amalgamation agreement um then move forward down that path uh separately we've also uh continued the process of trying to sell out one of our our three of our Assets in Nevada to a company called valdo and that process should be unfolding we expect updated contracts to be signed here in the first quarter of the year and lastly the process of selling Maverick Springs which is our


former flight ship asset um we've just extended the sale of that uh or the process to close that sale uh by a short amount due to basically annual Cycles things slow down around year end and Christmas and whatnot so um anyways the we'll see those all uh continue to take shape this year in addition to we've really pivoted our entire Focus to bring our Lucero asset in Peru which is a past producing high-grade gold and silver mine into production this year yeah so yeah let's talk about the d lero project


you've sort of coined that into two aspects of of that project one is a social project and it's a mind project so you know explain to our viewers first you know you you consider it as a social project why why do you see that sure well um ultimately to obtain the permits the way that Peru structured things I believe this goes back to the 1950s is that the communities have access um they have the surface rights and then the government retained uh the ability to lease out the mineral rights and then


they on an annual basis lease those out so in order to be able to put a mind back into production like we are um or even do U more in-depth exploration we need to have an agreement with the community now they did provide us with a initially a 4-month uh work program uh where we were allowed to go in and do mapping which we've completed as well as drill site targeting Channel sampling and so on um all of that modeling and Analysis is underway right now and we are working with our community um


relations Specialists that we have hired they work on site uh in the Chas Community between 10 and 20 days a month and they have been doing that since June of last year and there working at uh basically obviously socializing the community with what we're up to what we intend to do and we've even brought in a local uh domestic Peruvian NGO that helps with community relations but also helps with Community Education and uh helping Define some of what they want as a community for social programs and in


turn by helping them with one thing they then help us uh in terms of extending our uh permit and we're looking for at least ideally 10 but uh even more is better so we can continue exploration and or extraction so uh before I go to you know the actual we talk about the the the Mind aspect of it when you're working with the community um what are some of the Lessons Learned like obviously I guess different communities are different so so what have been the biggest lessons and uh in terms of


effectively working uh you know with the community and having that successful relationship um in our case again it's Unique everywhere on the planet unique everywhere in Peru um but in our case we found this community to be very responsive um of the roughly 2800 people that live in the community uh there's a subsection of the the community that uh about 8 to 00 of those people work in the local miners Guild and they're working on I believe it's six different mines in addition to extracting ore from


the Lucero mine right now and um it really does boil down to um it's as simple as the economics they want a piece of you know the pie um so if there's any production that's going to be happening they want jobs they want uh to have their local businesses whether that's Trucking or something similar um employed as well as they do want some social uh programs so as we continue these negotiations um to extend our uh existing work permit we're going to them with the opportunity to look at some


social programs some education programs for children um operational health safety training and so on so now you're um progressing the the serah uh M project you know to bring it to production um what's uh what does it take to bring that to production um when we acquired this asset uh we were under the impression that and rightfully so that a lot of the historical data set was not available okay it wasn't available from the group that we purchased cipu resources um and it wasn't available


from the former owner when it was passed in um 1989 2005 it was in commercial production a lot of that historical data had been lost so our first step which we have just completed between October to the end of December was to basically rebuild all of the a mapping B do a ton of Channel sampling uh we took over 520 Channel samples uh through we originally anticipated that uh based on our education and what knew about it when we acquired it that there were only 2 and a half kilom of total underground workings


on this site uh that's outdated from 2005 but there's over 8 kilometers of overall underground workings so in the sense of uh you know a windfall of being able to look at all of this data and understand the vein structure and what the local artisinal miners have been doing over the years um we've been mapping we've been Channel sampling and we're now going to be setting drill targeting in place and we intend to be drilling both inside the veins um inside the adits that are there right now as


well as targeting from outside to figure out you know an understanding of um really life of Mind where these veins go um what level of extraction we can get to the permit allows for 350 tons uh per day but uh we're setting our sights on something more like 200 as a top end goal and we'll St stage our production levels uh starting at 2550 100 200 and so on um so we'll we'll form a mind plan around those efforts and again the past data set didn't exist so we had to recreate it and that's what we've done


up until December and right now all of the modeling analysis is underway so we can start drills turning as soon as a rainy season's over that's a tall order having no historical data but um can you talk about timelines are you able to talk about timelines in terms of um when you expect um ler to get to go to you know be in production um there there's two statements about that and yes I'll give you my best guesses uh the first statement is that the artisanal miners are currently in production today and


what I mean by that is that um because former owners of this mine as well as ourselves really up until the middle of last year had been absentee um in the sense of when there's no goalie in the net they can go do what they want um and effectively they are as artisanal miners in multiple mins around the region um they are extracting ore and we estimate that it's currently between 70 to 90 tons a week that they're extracting right now and we intend to be formalizing them um meaning uh there's a permit process in Peru


called the reinfo process and we're currently with our local um community outreach Specialists they're speaking to all of these small permit holders there were like little pin drops on our map and uh trying to bring them in under us and it's a simple case of Economics of you know we will take on the expenses and we will continue to bring their production um under us we get to sell their or and that is one way of bringing uh some level of production under element 79 in the very short run the


second way of doing so is uh we are working with a couple different uh potential off-takers and uh we have already been trading paperwork back and forth in terms of that and once we know we have proof of concept of someone saying you know hang your flag out there saying I'm willing to buy your product that obviously Spurs a lot of things into action right now we'r under um as I just mentioned a kind of a natural break where it's the rainy season and at the altitude of this mind everything's Iced Out you can't access


it so right now is the best time to be doing the we'll call it the soft work the desk work and the community work so that we're ready to hit the ground running as soon as uh things thaw out and we're able to access uh the working is good right so the looking into the first half of 2024 what can we expect from moment you're going to see us continue to work with the community to formalize the existing production and bring it under us you're going to see um ideally again I don't have a hard line


on specific timing but um you're going to see the uh an off take agreement or potentially a couple of them be signed and uh with that in mind we'll be bringing around all of our analysis and modeling to the table in terms of setting out drill plans and getting drills turning uh we expect that to be happening March through May as a rough window um in addition to that all of the channel sampling that we've just finished those assets should be coming back from the uh the labs here in the


very short run uh the next two to three weeks and we'll be releasing that information uh which I anticipate would reflect what we've already been releasing uh back in April we had some very high-grade results from Channel sampling done inside the uh or grab sampling done inside the veins and I think we'll be pretty impressed with what's coming through on those when we get that information in so we're here at V I obviously in Vancouver um what is the key message you want the attendees


here uh to know about your company the biggest pivot is that we've changed from um basically an asset amalgamator into a near-term production story and it's very tangible in the sense that it's currently under production by the artisanal minor there's a government push to make those um arisal miners formalize we are currently working to formalize with them bring that production under us and then ramp that production up great well thanks James for J joining me today and sharing some updates about your company


thank you very much I appreciate the opportunity and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation I'll CEO Insight if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss future updates and interviews see you next [Music] time