Thank you for joining Noble Capital Markets Emerging Growth Virtual Equity Conference. I am Mark Reichman, one of Noble's Senior Research Analysts. Today, we are joined by Mr. Craig Lindsay, Chief Executive Officer of U.S. Operations for Resolution Minerals. Resolution is an Australian exploration and development company focused on advancing the Horse Heaven gold, antimony, tungsten, and silver project in central Idaho. Resolution's ordinary shares are listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the symbol RML, and the company's American depositary shares are listed in the United States on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol RML. Craig, the floor is yours.
Mark, thank you very much. Really appreciate you folks hosting me here today. I would like to speak to you about critical metals, the United States, and a story that has got a big gold kicker wrapped around it. As I go through this presentation, please do consider these disclaimers and forward-looking statements which will be made today. So corporate snapshot. We are an Idaho-based story. We have the Horse Heaven project. We have three commodities. We have critical metals, antimony and tungsten, and we have gold. We have a 15,000 acre project in Idaho.
We own 100% interest in it. What is interesting about this story, we are directly adjacent to the Stibnite Gold Project operated by Perpetua Resources. If there is one thing from a geologic perspective to take away from this conversation, we are a direct geologic analog to Perpetua. If you like Perpetua and what they have accomplished over the past couple of years, I really consider the Horse Heaven project to be Stibnite 2.0. Couple of other things. We are a past producer. We produced historically both tungsten and antimony.
More recently, we have just completed a 12,000 m drill program, 42 drill holes. We have only issued six to the market. We have 36 holes to go, and we are looking for some of these to generate some real excitement in the market. Then finally, what I will speak to today is U.S. government support. Horse Heaven does have FAST-41 coverage on two of our targets, known as Antimony Ridge and Golden Gate. So we are in the state of Idaho. I think you have had some Idaho folks on today talking about their project. It is a very favorable mining state.
Long history of exploration, development, mining of silver, gold, copper, molybdenum, large open-pit phosphate mines, and more recently, a thematic around critical metals. So a very favorable mining state. What you are looking at here is our Golden Gate and our Antimony Ridge story. Golden Gate is gold and tungsten. Antimony Ridge is antimony. I am going to try and address these both in 15 minutes. I will also speak a little bit to the geology out there and how we compare to Perpetua. So what do we have here?
This map here is showing you up in the top left corner, the Antimony Ridge and the Golden Gate targets at Horse Heaven. So this is a 15,000-acre project, and Antimony Ridge and Golden Gate cover just a postage stamp of our entire footprint. There's a thematic in the background here where we've got these past producing assets, which we are rapidly developing, and there's an emerging story around district-scale targets for gold and critical metals at Antimony Ridge. It's a very exciting project from that perspective.
Secondly, we are right next door to the Perpetua Resources story. You can see that in this map here. What does that give us? There's a lot of eyeballs on Perpetua, number one, so there's a lot of people coming through Idaho going up to Perpetua. They drive right past our project. We're benefiting from infrastructure out at the Stibnite Gold Project. They've upgraded the road network into our project. Secondly, they're building a brand-new transmission line that's going to cross right across the Horse Heaven project to access Stibnite. That's very positive for us. I mentioned this intrusion-related gold system.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but anyone who's interested in geology who's watching this, we are an intrusion-related gold system. If this is the Stibnite project, this is Horse Heaven. My head is this intrusion that's coming up right from deep within the Idaho Batholith up to the surface, and that is the geologic model that we've got at Horse Heaven, and that's the geologic model that supports all of the gold, antimony, and tungsten at the Stibnite project. I want to be clear here, and it's something that our Lead Geologist, Bill Breen, talks about.
This is not a closeology play. Bill has coined the term exactology. We're not close to Stibnite. We're not similar to Stibnite. We've got the exact same geology that they do. Let's talk antimony first, and it's very exciting here from the perspective of the grades that we have, we see at Antimony Ridge. We are talking high-grade veins that are between 30%-50% on average. These are veins five to seven, up to 2 ft thick, that march down 3,000 ft of historic trenches that produced historically during the First World War and the Second World War.
With that kind of grade, you're almost pulling concentrate out of the ground at 50% grades. That really differentiates us from other antimony stories, domestically and, in fact, globally. The fact that this thing produced historically is exciting. When you look at what we've got, this is a large target here for antimony at Antimony Ridge. It's 1,000 m long, so these trenches are 3,000 ft or 1,000 m long. They're about a target about 700 m wide, and there's a vertical elevation of over 250 m. We are in the process of permitting Antimony Ridge for 50 drill sites.
We want to be out there drilling next season for antimony. We've also applied for a large bulk sample, so that's a great story. This past summer, we pulled about 35 tons of high-grade material out of those open pits. These are just float rocks that were sitting there, and we're using that rock to do some work developing a hydrometallurgical processing solution and putting in a pilot plant that can be serviced with this material that we pulled off. We do have a mine-to-metal platform for antimony. We are not just an exploration and development company. We are going upstream and downstream in that we want to develop a mine.
But just as importantly, and very critically from a U.S. perspective, the demand is there for processing capacity. We have hired a full-time Chief Metallurgist in January. He has been developing a processing flow sheet for both antimony and tungsten. His PhD is in antimony processing, so he is the right guy for what we are doing. What we would like to do is develop a hub-and-spoke model for not only processing material from Horse Heaven, but also from regional mines that may not be large enough to support standalone processing facilities on their own.
The current administration's focus is, yes, on developing domestic mine supplies, but it is also very focused, and in fact, probably more focused on the processing side of things. That is a big focus. Golden Gate. This is the second target we talked about. Golden Gate is 2 km long from north to south. We have had some great drill results last year, 250 m from surface, 1.5 g/ ton. This past summer, we have been drilling at Golden Gate North and Golden Gate South. Down at Golden Gate South, never before drilled, we have got discovery holes out there.
The first hole I reported on was 305 m of 0.64 g/ ton with gold starting from surface. What we are trying to do here at Golden Gate is demonstrate that Golden Gate North and Golden Gate South, this 2 km+ strike length along something called the Golden Gate Fault Zone, is one large, connected, mineralized corridor. If we can do that, you have got 2 km+ of strike. This is anywhere from 400 m- 700 m wide, and there is a vertical elevation over 1,000 ft.
If we can prove this connection, you are going to see a very exciting gold story developing here. We put 12,000 m down, 42 holes. This is where we drilled this year. This is where you are going to get some excitement with 36 more holes of results. What you are looking at here is some cross-sections. All I want to show you here is this mineralization at Golden Gate North and Golden Gate South that starts at surface and ends in mineralization. We also, at Golden Gate, that entire 2 km length, it is a tungsten story.
At Golden Gate North, there was the Golden Gate tungsten mine. We are going to be issuing results on tungsten, which is going to be exciting. When I say results, we are confident we are going to show some tungsten numbers, because we have already announced to the market that some of the core at Golden Gate South lights up under an ultraviolet lamp. Tungsten is hosted in a mineral called scheelite, which lights up under these ultraviolet lamps.
What is exciting, when you look at Golden Gate North, where the Golden Gate tungsten mine produced historically, from the 1950s up to 1980. It produced intermittently at very high grade, 1.5%- 2%. We are drilling up at Golden Gate North around the old mine. At Golden Gate South, 2 km away, we are seeing tungsten mineralization that is also associated with this gold. If you believe this whole gold story being 2 km+ in strike, that tungsten has that same kind of potential, and that is very, very exciting.
The other thing that you get from a tungsten exposure with our company, we acquired something called the Johnson Creek Mill, and there's a 25-acre site at the bottom of the hill. There's a mill on it. It's a historic mill site. It's where they processed the antimony and the tungsten from the Golden Gate Mine. We've got a mill site, electricity, water, it gives us a lot of flexibility for future processing activities. Just as importantly, we've got 2,000 tons of stockpiles that was produced at the Golden Gate tungsten mine that's located at the mill site, and there's another 4,000 tons up outside the old mine portal.
We are in talks with a couple of groups about getting those tungsten stockpiles processed. That will generate some near-term cash flow. What are we doing going forwards? These are the catalysts that everyone gets excited about. Over the next couple of months, we're going to be issuing results on 36 drill holes from Golden Gate. We're going to be doing some of this work on processing of tungsten material. Tentatively, early in 2027, we'll be putting out a maiden resource estimate.
On a parallel basis in the background, we're doing a lot of this work on metallurgical testing and developing our process flow sheets for this hydrometallurgical processing solution. Then in the background, the boring stuff, we are permitting. We filed a plan of operation at both Golden Gate and at Antimony Ridge for expanded exploration programs at both of those targets. There'll be expanded exploration at Golden Gate to cover that entire 2 km+ strike that we see, and we're permitting for a maiden drill program and a bulk sample at Antimony Ridge.
These two permits are being processed under the FAST-41 program. The FAST-41 program, it doesn't circumvent the permitting process. There's no loopholes there. You're not shortcutting the permitting. What it does is put your regulatory authority, in our case, the U.S. Forest Service, instead of just an open-ended permitting process, you agree to a fixed timeline to permit things. That's a great step in the United States to help develop new mines and get this whole critical metals process flowing again in the United States.
We've got a great team. It's led by an Executive Director in Sydney, Australia. He's done a great job raising capital for us. Mendel Rogatsky in New York is an Executive Director. He has got a very good operational guy, a lot of experience building large-scale projects, and that's really helping us out. Brett Lynch is a Non-Executive Director of the company, has a significant amount of critical metals experience in North America in the lithium space. He's bringing that experience to us, building large-scale projects, to Resolution and the Horse Heaven Project.
I mentioned our metallurgical lead Adam Roper. Then on the ground, we've got some of the best geologists I've ever worked with who are local Idahoans and adding a lot of value to what we're doing. Guys like Austin Zinsser have worked at the Stibnite project for many years and are now consulting to us. Just a very strong team. That, I've gone through a lot of information in a short period of time. I hope you captured my enthusiasm for what we're doing. It's antimony, it's high grade, it's tungsten, a past-producing mine, getting that back into production.
You've got in the background this whole gold story, which helps de-risk the whole process. We're an absolute Stibnite lookalike. Compelling valuation, in my opinion. We are well under $100 million in valuation at $60 million, $70 million right now on any given day. You look at Perpetua being $3 billion+. With the work that we're doing, I think there's a lot of catalysts ahead. That's the story. Mark, I'll turn it over to you for questions.
Thank you, Craig. First is, Golden Gate has returned broad gold mineralization from multiple holes. What has the drilling told you about the scale, continuity, and geological controls of the system?
Well, it's told us a lot, Mark. When we first got into this, the only drilling that had been done on the project was done at Golden Gate North, and it was shallow drilling just down 300 ft. So call it 100 m holes that were drilled in two programs in the late 1980s and the early 1990s by a couple of prior operators. We went in there last year. First holes we drilled, we said we want to go deeper, and so we were drilling these 300 m holes, and we were getting mineralization from top to bottom at Golden Gate North. We're seeing more of that mineralization this year.
This year, 40% or 50% of our holes were drilled at Golden Gate South, 2 km south, and we're getting these hits of gold that are hosted in the exact same rock. It's on the projected fault line that we've identified from geophysics. We were also drilling these gold and soil anomalies and tungsten and soil anomalies at Golden Gate South. It's all starting to come together. Next year will be critical in that we'll have a permit to drill between those two targets, and if we're getting gold and tungsten between those two targets, I think you're onto an elephant here from a deposit perspective.
Well, you have released two sets of drill results in August and September, three holes each. It seemed to me like the second set that was released in September, that might have indicated some localized higher-grade zones that may represent some feeder structures. Is that the right way to think about that?
That is exactly the right way to. We have got these stockwork veins that are showing a lot of disseminated gold, some of it lower grade, sub gram per ton. Mark is referencing, the last three holes we issued on, we were hitting 7 g/ton and 14 g/ ton gold material in veins. That is, grade is king, and those kind of grades can carry an underground mining operation.
There is a lot of work to do to prove those veins up, but you see high-grade mineralization up north as well as down at the south end. Again, it is very exciting to have these high-grade feeder structures that geologists get very excited about. I am a promoter, and I get excited about. Our geologists will talk to you till they are blue in the face, and they are very excited at the potential of following up on these high-grade vein structures.
Now, at Antimony Ridge, the modeling identified 100 high-grade antimony silver veins within those 30 vein swarms. What additional drilling and technical work is needed before you can determine whether Antimony Ridge could support a standalone development opportunity?
Well, that's a good question. There has been a little bit of historic drilling, spotty drilling up at Antimony Ridge. It's never been drilled on a coordinated basis. We've got 50 drill sites we're permitting, and we'll be able to drill 250 holes off of those sites at Antimony Ridge over a relatively small area. That will help identify the extent laterally and at depth of these high-grade veins that we see. Then in between the high-grade veins is this low-grade stockwork mineralization that is 0.5%- 2% material, and that's the same grade of material that you get at Stibnite next door.
I get excited about the high-grade veins, but there's also this disseminated antimony and silver. Mark Reichman, we haven't talked about this at Antimony Ridge. We pulled a rock off of that hill last year that graded 49% antimony and 1,420 g/ ton silver. I don't even talk about this, I think it was 3 g/ ton gold. These are good numbers. It's very exciting. I'm not answering your question directly, but you do have to go and drill this thing out to confirm the edges, the size of this mineralization.
But what I want to clarify is there's near-term production potential from this mine in that these high-grade veins are sitting right out at surface and marching down these historic pits en echelon. This was not mined out in the First World War and the Second World War. They're still sitting there. As I mentioned, we had a couple of guys up there for a month just picking up, doing ground-based exploration, and we picked up 30 tons- 35 tons of high-grade material and I think 45 super sacks that are sitting at the bottom of the hill, and we're using that material to feed into a pilot plant that we're developing.
We are a bit of a hybrid in that, yes, we've got a lot of drilling to go to establish a conventional resource out at Antimony Ridge that would feed into a PFS and a feasibility study. But there's also, how did they mine it in the First World War and the Second World War? They went in there with backhoes, and they just ripped this stuff out, and it's right at surface. A very simple mining operation. We've got a bit of both. We've got a bit of a hybrid development model.
Now, the Johnson Creek acquisition gave Resolution those historical tungsten stockpiles and, of course, an existing processing infrastructure. I think that if I remember correctly, the test work produced concentrates grading as high as 52.3% tungsten. Could you just talk about how that material provides an earlier, maybe a lower capital commercial opportunity while Golden Gate and Antimony Ridge continue to be defined?
Yeah. The Johnson Creek Mill, there's a couple of things that are positive about that acquisition. Number one, we acquired two parcels of land that were 25 acres. We call it the Johnson Creek Mill Site and Antimony Camp, but they're contiguous. Having private land right adjacent to 50,000 acres of federal lands gives you quite a bit of flexibility from a permitting and a land use perspective because it is private land. We've been able to use this land for a staging area for exploration, doing all of our logging, cutting of the core, storage.
We've had a huge water system there to filter water that we've used for drilling. It provides that flexibility and this next season we'll have a man camp on that property. We've drilled water wells that are producing 100 gallons per minute of water, good clean water for our— It's excellent having the private land. Then to answer your question specifically about Johnson Creek, the mill site. The mill building is in great shape.
You'd have to rehab a lot of the equipment in there to put it back into production, and a lot of the equipment that you would be using on a go-forward basis would be a modular milling system, which may or may not fit in that mill. What that mill comes with is 2,000 tons of stockpiles sitting that were never processed, that grade around average about 1.8%, that we want to take that material and process it by a third party to start generating some near-term cash flow for the company, which would help differentiate us.
There's also outside of. Mark, you haven't been up to the project, but outside of the old mine portal at the Golden Gate Tungsten mine, they left 4,000 tons of material. We measured that material. It's not a compliant resource, but we go in there, look at density factors, area, and there's about 4,000 tons of material there. Anyways, that material can be used to do some testing work, which we are already doing from a metallurgical perspective, but it also generates some near-term cash flow.
Now, we have a question from an investor asking about the company's funding runway across drilling, metallurgy, permitting, and downstream studies.
Yeah. The cash requirements of an exploration development company are high, and when you're looking at getting into development, and pilot mills, et c, the numbers start to run up. That's why we've gone onto Nasdaq. This is a U.S.-centric story. U.S. capital markets are deep. It's going to provide liquidity for the company, hopefully a revaluation of the company and access to capital to fund the growth of the business.
We've raised AUD 47 million over the past little over a year. So we've got a demonstrated track record of being able to raise capital. In this whole critical metals thematic that's so popular in the United States, we're seeing a lot of interest from generalist investors looking for exposure to this. I think raising capital isn't going to be a huge issue. On a parallel basis, we have been spending time in Washington, D.C., and listeners, everyone's out there talking to—
Craig, that's the next question. Suffice it to say, you have a strong balance sheet. The next question is really what specific forms of government support, grants, procurement, project finances, strategic partnerships could realistically become relevant to Horse Heaven? I'd also like to frame it in the standpoint that when you think in terms of upstream, midstream, downstream, that midstream or that processing capacity is of critical importance, which is what I think the Trump administration has identified with MP Materials in the rare earth sector.
So you've talked about this mine-to-metal platform and developing a processing capacity there, a regional hub. Would there also be any opportunities to partner with other companies, like for example, Perpetua next door on something like that?
Yeah. We are talking to everyone right now. The door is open, the phone is ringing off the hook. We're having quite a few conversations with a whole range of companies out there, both upstream and downstream. There is a lot of interest. Perpetua, great company. We know them well. Their geologists know our story well. We're not lining ourselves up to sell to Perpetua. We're trying to go it alone. There's demand for this. There's a huge amount of demand for processing capacity, which can't be met even by Perpetua. So there is an opportunity there for us, and it's a very clear runway for both antimony and tungsten.
From a Washington perspective, we are members of the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, which is a group of over 1,000 companies in the defense sector, and that's one of the avenues that you use to access some of this government capital. Are we out in Washington talking to folks? Are we developing good relationships? Are the doors open? Absolutely. However, I'm a huge believer that you cannot rely on cheap funding, government funding, grants, free money, whatever you want to call it, to support a project. A project has to stand on its own, or it's not going to have long-term permanence, in my opinion.
Some of the things that are really good from our perspective, the infrastructure where we are is good, access to the project is good. We've got high grades, which is always very important of both tungsten and antimony. Then you've got this gold story sitting behind us, Mark, which provides an outlet valve for guys where it's like this critical metal story, I think it's going to be there in the medium to long term. It's not going anywhere. You guys got to go from domestically in the United States, we have to go from zero production up to 100 mp h as fast as we can. This is not going anywhere. This is not a current administration versus future. This isn't left or right. This is something that the U.S. needs, period.
Right.
It's not going anywhere. Gold is always exciting for folks, and particularly at these gold prices. If you're a gold bug, this is a great story, and if you like the critical metals thematic, we've got that as well. Perpetua has always marketed themselves as a gold story with an antimony kicker. We've got the exact same geologic model, the same sort of geologic potential, but we market ourselves as a critical metal story with a gold thematic wrapped around it.
Well, Craig, that was a great presentation, and thank you so much for joining us today.
Mark, I really appreciate the time. Thank you very much for having us.