Now, it's a great pleasure to welcome Russell Bradford, I should say. On the 15th of September, First Nordic Metals and Mawson Finland announced a strategic merger. More or less fresh out of the oven, we will now get first-hand information. I believe that we will have Noora Ahola, Managing Director, on stage as well. Welcome, and the floor is yours.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you. I will sit here.
Yeah, Noora, you can sit there.
Good morning, everybody. My name is Russell Bradford. Today I'm going to take you through a few things. First of all, talk about the merger that's happened. I'd like to go through some of the key points that our assets have, and certainly what attracted me to come on board as CEO. I think it's important to understand we've just announced a raise. We'll go into that and the work that we'll be doing over the next couple of years with that money. Just talk about the opportunity that I think we've got. Noora is joining me. Noora is the MD of Mawson . We'll get into Noora's new role shortly. On the 15th of September, we announced a few things. The first thing was the merger. That was between First Nordic and Mawson Finland . That's a 1/3, 2/3 merger.
Coupled with that was a CAD 30 million raise, and that was on the Monday. On the Wednesday, there was an announcement that we're also going to raise CAD 50 million. Essentially, it was a CAD 80 million raise. It was CAD 68 million non-brokered. That close will happen in the next week or so. Essentially, we've got treasury now to look at these two assets with a long-term project view. I think that's important because we're not going back to the market in any short term asking for money. The third thing that was announced there was the board, the new board of the merged entity, and my appointment. They're all points that I would like to discuss. Let's look at the investment highlights. Essentially, you brought Finland and Sweden together. We're becoming a Nordic gold company.
If you look at the gold ounces on our balance sheet now, we've got over 2.4 million oz equivalent on our balance sheet. We also have the cobalt credit from the Finland asset as well, Mawson . We also have its gold and cobalt. Obviously, that has this strategic significance in the EU as well. We've spoken about the new management team. I'll get a bit more into that. Essentially, we've come on board now to look at development. I think that was important with the raise that we did. The treasury we have now, we can get into more project development and execution as opposed to the strategy that First Nordic had, which was discovering and exploring. We're kind of moving into this development phase now. We're obviously positioned well now for acquisition and consolidation of our assets.
I think it's been a fantastic exercise to raise this money. It just makes my job and the team's job. We're just thinking differently now. We're really well positioned. You know, I always look at these things, and we've all been in this position. You can only do with the resources you've got. Obviously, again, we're just going to start thinking longer term now on our approach to developing everything that's in our portfolio. Part of that announcement was the new board. Quickly, I'll go through the board. Peter Breese, Peter and I have worked together for over 25 years. We met in 2002. We were part of the Lion Ore Stable. That was the company that we sold to Norilsk Nickel for CAD 7 billion back in 2008. We had eight operating mines. Peter was CEO and then became CEO of Norilsk Nickel International as part of that transaction.
Straight after that, we went off and did Mantra Resources, which was a uranium project development in Tanzania. That was over a five-year period. We developed that project. That was sold to Uranium One in Toronto for just over [AUD 1 billion]. Just soon after that as well, moving to Ghana, West Africa, a gold mine, 220,000 oz gold mine, 3 million tons, moving up to 5.5 million tons within the expansion. We JV'd that with Gold Fields just before COVID, actually. Peter and I have got this operational project development experience. We have a team behind us who bring all of that expertise as well, not only contractors and EPCMs, but management as well. Over the course of time, I'm trying to just show here that this is a type of team that we'll start bringing on board as we move into project development with that experience.
I think it's fair to say we've earned our stripes. We've done this before. With that knowledge in mind, when we looked at these assets now, we'll get into that just now. That was kind of that thinking and that experience that allowed us to make a decision on coming on board with the First Nordic and the Mawson assets. Darren, I met Darren a couple of months ago, but Darren's been instrumental putting this together. I think it's fair to say that's Darren's strong point. He's been very involved with companies like Foran, Southern Cross. I think this is no different, looking at the opportunity, bringing these assets together, finding a new management team, and then raising the money and letting this thing now loose and let it form its own life. We're very fortunate to have Darren.
It's been great to get Darren's input into everything that we want to do and where we want to go. Noora, Noora on the stage. Noora is the current MD of Mawson Finland . Noora is a great asset, permitting, Nordic, worked for the forestry, spent a lot of time in mining operation and management of mining companies. For Noora's sins, I've said to Noora, can you please look after the Nordics? Noora now will be our Nordic manager. Not only Finland, Noora's role will expand to Sweden as well. I think that's very important. I've always said everywhere where we've worked, you know, it's not my backyard. I don't, you know, I've got to learn that, right? We know how to build a mine. We know how to do metallurgy. We know how to drill. We know all that stuff.
We've got to learn through Noora and others how we do it here. That's very important. I think having Noora on the executive and on the board is critical to our success. We'll take guidance from Noora and others in the Nordics. That'll be a key part of the leadership. Marc, who's an existing board member from First Nordic , he worked with Agnico for over 30 years, a geologist. Obviously, he understands that relationship and the work ethic of what Agnico brings. I think that's important that we keep that continuity. Karilyn is a new board member based out of Paris. Worked for McKinsey a long time. Done a lot of project development, evaluation, an EU citizen. That's important. Karilyn's coming on board. Adam is the existing First Nordic board member who would spend a lot of time with Darren putting this whole thing together.
This will be our new board. I think it's aligned to where we want to be next, right? We want to get into, let's say, execution, development, and kind of, you know, understand when's the right time to rather go and explore. I think having over CAD 80 million in the bank and this team, we want to now move into that kind of next phase of development and execution. The two assets, First Nordic , there's the 45/55 joint venture with Agnico . That's been going for a number of years. The Barsele ore body , great ore body, you know, in the mid-north of Sweden, 2.4 million oz, majority of it inferred. Agnico have done a great job managing as the operator, not only in community relations, but also environmental. A fantastic job that they've done.
All the technical work that's been done there is, you know, to the standard you would expect from a company like Agnico . We've got a great partner in the project there. First Nordic also on ground north and south of Barsele, and you'll see just now on a map. There's been some success in the drilling and the grades that they're seeing. We've obviously got to evaluate that as well. If you look at Mawson , you have the Rajapalot project. That's just shy of 1 million oz, very good grade. A PEA was cut on that project in 2023. I've mentioned that it was done at CAD 1,700 an ounce. We're seeing a lot of this now with the gold price doing what it's doing.
A lot of companies are kind of blowing the dust off these studies and, you know, putting new numbers in and seeing what that does to the resource, seeing what that does to the economics, you know, and then coupled with that, let's get new CapEx, OpEx, and kind of get a new base. At Rajapalot, that is something that is very obvious we need to do. Let's go and redo that. It's not a big exercise, but it will certainly give us a baseline and an understanding of what we've got. That's something that's on the to-do list pretty soon. We want to recut that and get an understanding of this project. Because the economy, I've done the numbers, but I've just done them on the back of a fag packet, right? We're getting EPCM to do this.
That will look very differently based on what we're seeing in the gold market right now. This is where we operate. When we did our due diligence on these assets, you know, often I think back to when we were working in Tanzania and we were in the middle of the Selous Game Reserve. There was a small geological camp. We had to fly into Likuyu. We had to drive through the forest and it'd been raining. Took us, I think, eight hours to get there. It was a camp. There's no Wi-Fi. You've all been there before, right? I was running a project in Timmins just recently before I came on board. I went to Timmins and it's like a Kalgoorlie, right? I mean, the projects are pretty close around Timmins. You drive there, there's power, there's people, there's data.
I went to the Barsele Project and then went up to see Noora , Rajapalot. The infrastructure is fantastic. In the Nordics, I think we're very blessed having that. It's important because it's not only about movement of people and mobilization. It's all to do with things like flights and camp. Where's the power coming from? How do you get the sheets of metal in that we need to weld to build the tanks? There's a rail line at Barsele. There's a road. You drive on a tarred road all the way there. There's a hydro plant across the road. We all know how cheap the power is in this part of Sweden. It's very, very important. I look at those things and already I'm saying, that's a tick. That's a big tick because it's not only about CapEx, it's about OpEx.
Not only in Sweden, but also in Finland. Tarred road, good access to power, people, water. It's all these things that we do spend time and money looking for and trying to make a plan in projects to make this thing work. We don't have that issue. In our due diligence, this was a big tick, a big, big, big tick. I think coupled with that as well was the understanding of the community relationship and the community relations. Up in Rajapalot, Noora has done a great job with her team, keeping the community engaged on the project, on the development, what is happening. Obviously, with Agnico and their involvement with community relations, their environmental monitoring, and same with Noora as well. When I was up there recently, I saw all the water stations and everything.
We looked at this and we said, this is very important because I'll get back to this. It's the backyard scenario I talk about. You will never build a mine if those things aren't correct. You can have the cheapest OpEx and CapEx, but you don't get your community and you don't get your indigenous affairs and you don't get government respect and where we're operating, it's not going to happen. I certainly feel very fortunate for the work that's been done so far by both companies on that. We've got a good foundation and we'll continue with that. That was something that was very important in our due diligence and it's there and we know that we can continue with that work. That was a very positive tick for us.
I'm learning about the Nordics, but I used to go to Harjavalta a lot when we were in the nickel business, Nickel work when we were in the nickel business in Norway. There's a lot of big mining companies in the Nordics, big and very, you know, first-class world standard companies. We're not in an environment where we have to go and bring thousands of expats and teach people what to do and how to do it. No, no, no, we can learn a lot. By the way, this is a cold weather climate. The Nordics know how to mine and build and operate in these types of environments as they do in Canada. We have to take lessons from that and we also have to get on board with that, right? I think we're in a very fortunate place to operate.
There's been well-established work that's been done and I think that we can only learn and build on that. This is a ground that First Nordic have. There's been drilling up and down here and I'll show some results of that just now. There's the Barsele Project there. Effectively, I said, the First Nordic grounds bookended with Barsele in the middle. This is over a 100 km strike. It's essentially a gold camp. I think this is the largest gold landholding in Sweden, including the Barsele Project. The First Nordic guys have been drilling here. They've had some pretty good hits and I'll get to those just now. It's a good piece of land and obviously having the Barsele Project in the middle, I think about Ghana and the land that we had there. We had the Obotan mine and the Sefwi.
In between, we had all these pits, satellite pits and, you know, two, three-year pits. You can truck all up and down this belt into a centralized plant. That's just me thinking out loud. I looked at this and I said, this is very similar to what we saw and what we had in Ghana. I think this is a model that we'll have to test when we start looking at our feasibility work and how we are going to put this whole thing together. This is the Barsele ore body, a cross-section there. There's three zones here. Good grades, good continuity. It's open at depth. We know that. It's open along strike as well. There's been a lot of work done on this through Agnico , over 150,000 m of drilling done on it. It's well-defined. It's a majority in inferred. It's 2.4 million oz in inferred.
Obviously, more drilling to be done. The opportunity here is there's expansion drilling. There's other targets in this region. As I keep saying, the infrastructure is fantastic in this area. I think this is a great project to be part of our portfolio with the 45/55 JV we would have with Agnico Eagle . The drilling that First Nordic have done, a lot of you would know about this, but I really just want to talk about the intercepts. These are pretty significant intercepts that they've seen at Avan, you know, over 20 m running at, you know, + 1.52 g per ton. We're definitely in a gold belt here, right? You can see with the drilling that's been done over the last two years, there's not a resource here yet. As part of our planning, and I'll talk about that just now, what we need to do.
We're certainly in an area that we can build on in that region with the Barsele in the middle and then, you know, north and south of that deposit that we can create this gold camp as such. You can start putting iterations around processing and stuff around that. The guys are doing a good job there. The Rajapalot project, I'm going to ask Noora to comment more on this. Essentially, this is just shy of a million ounces, very good grade, near surface mineralization. I was quite surprised in Sweden and Finland compared to Canada, the depth of the till. Here in the Nordics, the till is shallow. It's narrow. This is 5 m and it's not significant. In Canada, we had 20 m- 40 m till cover. This is very different. Noora, if you want to maybe comment on some of the work that you've done.
Okay. Thank you, Russell. Some of the people in the audience, I saw you looking at the clock. We are having double time here. We have 40 minutes, actually. Russell obviously likes to talk. You spent already over 20 minutes. I'm not going to do that, but yes, I'm the CEO for Mawson Finland . For the new company, I will be the Managing Director for Nordics. Like Russell said, my specialty is environmental issues and permitting, government relations, these kinds of things. Like Russell said, if you want to get any project permitted in the Nordics, you need to know what you are doing and take good care of the local communities. I'm very, very happy to live in Rovaniemi. I live 30 km from the site. Our whole team in Finland is local.
If the people are part of the community, it's easier to get the social acceptance in the area and in the country as well. We are trying to build a very good Nordic company here and employ people who actually know these countries and how to work here. I think Russell has a good hunch on that already now. Rajapalot, it's a good project. I worked with the project for over 10 years now. We are already in the middle of a permitting process. I always call them processes because it's not just one permit. You need to do impact assessments and land use plans and so on and so on. It will take time. Like Russell said, we're going to update now our resource. We had some good results from 2025 and 2024 winters when we started as Mawson Finland .
It will be very interesting to see what comes out. Gold price is totally different. I think, of course, we have some kind of a hunch of what will come out. Let's see in, I would say, Q1 maybe 2026 when we can see some of it. For Mawson Finland , I can say we are very excited also about the new JV partnership with Agnico Eagle with Barsele Project. There will be a lot of discussions that we will be having with them during the coming months. That's it. Much quicker than you were.
Thank you, Noora. Thank you. Thank you. As we said, we're going to cut a new PEA on this and get an idea of really what it looks like in today's gold price environment. It's a simple flow sheet. I've looked at it. There's a cobalt credit that we need to get our heads around and just update that with new mining costs, G&A, OpEx, and let's understand what we've got. Then we can start planning what's next. I think that's very important. We've got to be careful that we don't get ahead of ourselves. We've got good treasury now. The team's all coming on board, but let's just do a bit of planning before we go into execution. Let's just talk about we did the raise. The money's coming in.
You've got this company now with a great management team, a new board, and + CAD 80 million in the bank. It's a very fortunate position. I've come on board and there's a lot of things that I've seen that are like, let's just review, let's stop, let's just take stock, and let's respect the process. We're going through a merge. In some respects, we have to be conscious of our corporate activity. We've got to be careful that we don't execute too early. Let's get that merge in place, which will happen the 15th of December, and then we can move into execution. In some respects, that's been a great blessing because often CEOs are put under pressure, come in a new role, and they have to get into execution pretty quickly. Like, what are you doing? You're in this role now.
We've got the, let's say, the fortunate luxury of taking our time to rearrange, put the new organogram in place, new roles, and get the technical team to evaluate everything that we've got. More importantly, put an execution plan together for next year with a budget. I'm sure you'll start to see me talking at these types of conferences. A part of our language will be, this is what we said we would deliver on, and this is now what's happened. That's why we spend X amount of dollars. I think it's important as accountability for a CEO to show not only the plan and what you expect to get out of it. Of course, there'll always be bumps in the way, always, always. It's important to show this is the plan, this is the execution, and this is why we've got X amount of dollars still in the bank.
I feel very accountable for that. You've got a lot of money in the bank all of a sudden, you know, are the CAD 10 million or CAD 100 million? It's not my money, it's shareholders' money. We've got to look after it. I'm very conscious of that. I'm saying to the team, let's take our time, let's put a proper plan together that the board can approve before the end of the year, and then we move into execution. As an example, at Rajapalot, when the frost comes in January, that's the perfect time we go and then do drilling, right? We're busy doing all that evaluation now. I just think that's an important message that you can lose a lot of money just spinning around, and that's not how we're going to run this company.
I know that board will not allow that, and certainly it's not going to be out of what I operate this company. With working with Peter for 25 years, I know that's just not going to happen. That's 2025. In 2026, we'll obviously execute those plans, and there'll be drilling, you know, drilling programs to look at. There'll be PEAs that we've cut, there'll be work to be done on other assets as well that we've got. Obviously, we're very excited about coming on board with Agnico and the Barsele asset and that. We're getting our heads around the size and what that is and how that whole joint venture works. That'll be part of that.
I think as well, part of bringing on now, we've just done this capital raise, and you can kind of say, we've got this two-year horizon ahead of us now. I think it's important that we bring in a new type of shareholder onto our register. Someone who's looking at this longer term, like I am. I really believe that this is a start of building a gold company, not just a mine. This is not, I mean, we can build a mine, Rajapalot, and that's fine. We do that. I think there's opportunity here to demonstrate that to the investor community and actually build a company. I was asked this question, and what, you know, I've moved from Perth, and some of you have been to Perth. If you've ever been to Perth, particularly for about nine months of the year, it's a pretty nice place to live.
It's sunshine and golf and, you know, help people do bits and bobs, and that's all good. I'm getting about three hours sleep at the moment, so that's fine. I've moved from Perth to London because I want to commit to this, because I want to commit and I want to show people that we're all committed, we're all in. I've done that because I can't run that from Australia. It's impossible. More importantly, I want to demonstrate that I'm serious about this. I want to build a gold company. If I look at what's happened over the last two months between the team, the raise, the board, the support, First Nordic existing board have come on board with this. They've realized we need to change. We need to make this happen. There's been a lot of things, alignment of planets. It's all coming together.
It's important that I commit to it as well. I've done that. I guess what I'm saying is I think back to what we did at Lion Ore. In 1995, I was in Botswana. I think I was 26 years old then. Lion Ore was producing 2,200 tons of nickel a year through dry perm rolls. You roll forward 12 years, and it was producing 95,000 tons of nickel. It sold for CAD 7 billion. We all know here, 12 years goes like that. I see this company, and I'm sharing my vision. I might be right, I might be wrong, but I'm certainly standing here today. This is my dream. This is what I want to do. I want to build a significant gold company. This is the start of it. I think we've kicked off pretty well. Hopefully, I'm going to push for that.
That's what I want to happen. Let's see. Let's roll forward 10 years, and we'll see where we are. I heard the Alamos MD yesterday give his talk, and he spoke about working from a home office with a laptop and da, da, da, and look where they are today. I stood over there and listened to him. I said, it's exactly what we all want to do, and I'm no different. That's really my dream. I want to build a gold company here. I think we've spoken about what we want to do, how we're going to do it, the team, the money, what we're going to do over this next, between now and the end of the year. Next year's execution plan, the drilling, there's study work to be done, and all the environmental and the permitting and everything. We'll put those plans together.
In the new year, when the merge is complete, we'll start communicating all of that news and that work to the investor community. It's kind of, we, you know, we're busy doing all of that now in the background now. We're aligning the team to, you know, the thought process of execution as opposed to exploring. It's a different company. It's a different mindset. Obviously, with the treasury we've got, it's an absolute different way of thinking about things. This is a commentary around the transaction. It's in the deck. I'm looking at the time. Essentially, we did the raise at CAD 0.38. It's a 1/3, 2/3 merge. There's been representation from both companies on the boards. That's why you've got the board as it is now. That will be completed roughly around mid-December. It's a process. It's all going to plan. There's been no issues.
We should expect that completed mid-December, which is great timing. That gives us that two-month period for all this planning and work to be done. Obviously, the funds coming into the joint venture as well. This just talks about where we'll be. Obviously, with the attributable ounces at Barsele and the ounces from Rajapalot, we'll be up to just over 2 million oz there. As a total, then if you look at Barsele, this is just an example on a 100% basis, then we move up to over 3 million oz. Obviously, all the blue sky. I think it just paints a picture of where this company is thinking and where it's going to go and how it could potentially get there. These numbers aren't numbers that we've got to look for or find. It's all there in front of us. We've just got to now obviously put this together.
These are some financial matrix. Look, at the end of the day, if you look at our EV and where we're trading per ounce, we're running at around $75. It depends because obviously with this gold price, things are changing daily at the moment. Let's just say it's around $75 an ounce. That's where we are at the moment. You can decide if that's under or overvalued. I've got my view on it, but I know with this merge and, you know, other things we'll do, I think there's room for growth and more value to be generated out of this merge with these two assets. I think that's covered everything, really. I'm looking at the time, so we've got four minutes left.
Hopefully, we've given you a bit of flavor of where we're thinking, what we're doing, how we're doing it, and the opportunity to where we're going to go next. Thank you.
Thank you for that. We have at least one question there, and I'm sure there will be other questions there. Please go ahead.
On your last slides, what I wanted to see, namely a cleaner situation with ownership. As it stands, Barsele is a JV where Agnico Eagle is in the driving seat. It had been much better if they had come in as owners of one company because now you have to keep Barsele apart from Rajapalot. I mean, you cannot co-use personnel and so on.
Okay. Currently, we're going through, obviously, with the merge, you have to look at opportunity for G&A. We're going through that at the moment. Geologists, administrative staff, there will be some, let's say, changes around that. Even in Canada, the administrative functions, we can do that. Look, as it stands now, we're a 45% partner with Agnico , and that's how it is. I think with the money that we've raised and the way that we're thinking, there would be opportunity for the potential to go and discuss the opportunities with Agnico , and that will all come as we move forward. There will be more opportunity for consolidation and efficiency of personnel. Absolutely, yeah, I mean, that would be a very obvious thing to do, particularly when it's geologists and drill rigs.
You don't want too many of them because the one thing they love doing is drilling. We've just got to be careful with that. Hopefully that answers your question.
We got another question down there, I think. Yes, go ahead.
What is your theory about why Agnico haven't progressed since the PEA five years ago on the Barsele Gold Project?
First of all, I've got to be my view. If you look at Agnico , one of the best mining companies in the world, and you look at the developments and the projects that they've been working on and developed and are producing, I think in terms of they obviously have to, each project has to fight for its own capital, right? That's just how big mining companies work. If I look at the Barsele and then you look at the assets that Agnico have brought online over the last five years and where they are today, obviously, right decisions have been made. I think the Barsele has just been something that it's been there and it's had to sing for its supper and other assets have come ahead of that prior to Barsele coming on in project development.
They've obviously made the right decisions because CAD 120 billion market cap, you don't get that from making wrong decisions, right? They've done the right thing.
If there isn't any more, Russell and Noora, thank you very much. If anyone would like to have your presentation, what should they do? Should they contact you?
They can contact me. It's on the website and we're down at booth 92. I'm more than happy to speak to anybody even after the conference as well. Thank you for your time. Hopefully, we'll be meeting you again soon.
Thank you. Thank you. We have a break and we meet up here for the next speaker, preferably five minutes ahead. That would be a fund manager's view of the situation. Thank you.