In what circumstances did you join iMetal Resources and where are you today in the development of your mining projects?
While working on the growth & development of Geothermal Inc., I was approached to join iMetal Resources as an independent director. Given my relationship with major analysts from around the world, my market experience and the ability to help bring capital, I was tasked with offering my expertise to help the company raise capital. At that time, they were still in the pre-exploration phase and the projects had minimal work performed and there wasn’t even a data room setup yet. So I eventually got a clear mandate from the board of directors to take over as President & CEO, and to restructure and refinance the company. Our flagship property (Gowganda West) sits just 300 meters from the Juby Deposit, a well-known major deposit in Ontario, which is one of the safest and mining friendly jurisdictions in the country.
All our projects (three in Ontario and one in Quebec) are in the Abitibi Greenstone Gold Belt, one of the most prolific exploration and mining jurisdictions in the world. In the last 18-24 months we have undergone surface sampling and trenching processes, and then in late fall of 2022, we also commenced a small drilling program at Gowganda West, where we had planned to do between 1,500 and 1,750 meters of drilling but we ended up drilling 2611 meters. The exploration results came back with gold hits in every hole that was drilled, they were low grade but this was another confirmation of the presence of anomalous gold on our property. As a result, new targets were identified. We commenced drilling at both Gowganda West and our Carheil Project in early April.
What is the investing climate looking like right now and what type of financing are you pursuing?
Last year we completed $3 million in financing, out of which $1 million was hard dollars for general working capital, like marketing, accounting and legal expenses. The other $2 million we raised by issuing Flow- Through Shares. In Canada there is a flow-through financing system that allows investors to capitalize on both Federal and/or Provincial tax credits. This structure awards tax incentives to these Investors that support Canadian based public companies thus creating a more investment friendly environment that is eager to support businesses like ours. Earlier this year we also closed another financing that saw three institutional investors in this FT financing space and we managed to close $1.285 million, out of which $500,000 are meant for the Quebec project. On top of these, in December 2022, we ended up bringing in an institutional investor who wanted to give us $600,000 specifically for our graphite project. Furthermore, even our retail investors are very supportive. We had 23 million warrants at a strike price of 20 cents and of these investors exercised about 5.5 million warrants of those in the first few months of this year, which brought in another $1 million cash to help pay the bills. Hopefully, all this funding will enable us to complete 3,000 meters at Gowganda West and around 2,000 more at Carheil. The plan is to keep the drill bits going with the help of two local drilling groups (e.g., LaFramboise drilling), with which we have a great work relationship.
What makes gold a good investment in the current socio-political context?
There is a lot of chaos and confusion in the world right now and, throughout our history, whenever this happened, people chose to run towards something that has always held its value. In many countries around the world, and specifically in my birth country of India, one of the first valuable presents that you are given as a child is a gold chain. Resources like gold and silver have always been seen as stable and store value over a prolonged period of time.
Unfortunately, we have not yet seen the end of this global turmoil so, besides cryptocurrencies, the society is set to invest in resources that have always been consistent throughout the ages.
What are the next steps that you plan to take at iMetal Resources?
We are waiting for assays on both our projects, and we are working with our technical team to identify and confirm some of the new targets for the follow up stage of drilling. After these, we intend to pursue some more funds, probably in tandem with the restarting of the drilling campaigns, which are briefly on pause. We would like to do a much larger financing, in the range of $3 million to $5 million because, although now we are just scratching the sur
