Thank you for being here today, Jason. Could you tell us about yourself and your career?
Sure. So I've been in the mining industry for over 25 years now. I started my career off in engineering, but fairly quickly moved over to the operations side of the business. I spent about five years with Inco here in Sudbury and in supervision operations management. And then I transitioned out of Inco to a junior company that was starting up in Sudbury called FNX Mining. And I spent six years with FNX, and that was a great experience. We you know, brought three past producing mines back into production. You know, we're very successful, produced a lot of metal, and made some big discoveries, and essentially you know, became an acquisition target, and were acquired by... First, we merged with Quadra, become Quadra FNX, and then acquired by KGHM.
After that, my career path took me into more business development roles, and the corporate roles, and then I founded Magna in 2016, and I've been leading Magna ever since.
How many shares do you hold of Magna Mining?
Approximately CAD 10.4 million.
During the past year, I mean, since we spoke, beefed up the team, you have added a Chief Operating Officer, you have added others on the team. Could you tell us about your new additions?
Yeah. So Jeff Hoffman is our Chief Operating Officer. I've known Jeff for a long time. I've worked with him on two occasions. Really, our first time working together was back at FNX Mining, and you know, Jeff did an amazing job back there, and since that, then he went on to you know, do a lot of great things, including for five years, leading the team at Dumas Mining, which is a mining contractor. So he was the president before he came to work for Magna. And you know, Dumas had built mines and some shafts in Canada, U.S., Mexico.
So, you know, a lot of really great experience, you know, came with Jeff, and, you know, I couldn't be more thrilled to have a COO I trust so much, to run the operations side of our business and lead those people. So, I'm really thrilled to bring in Jeff. You know, we've added a number of other people, they're more junior, but we have, you know, brought some of the, the services that we had outsourced in the past, in-house, such as HR, which is great now to have that in-house as we continue to grow the team.
Could you tell us about the ownership structure for Magna? Who are your largest shareholders?
So, Dundee Corp, led by Jonathan Goodman, is our largest shareholder. Dundee holds just over 20%. And Jonathan sits on our board. So I have to say, you couldn't ask for a more supportive, collaborative shareholder to have than Dundee Corp. Hawke's Point is a private equity-type group that holds about 11% of the company. You know, then we have our management and insiders, so management board own approximately 10%, with myself being the largest shareholder out of that group. But our chairman also has a fairly large position. Well, all of our executives and our shareholders, you know, our-- sorry, our directors are our shareholders. And then we have a number of sort of typical mining funds that own smaller positions of, you know, 1%-4%.
You know, those would be like 1832, Mackenzie, Franklin.
Yeah, but in the past, during the past year, attended some... Done a push into the US, visited some US conferences, most notably Rick Rule's annual symposium. How many of your shareholders in percentage, the shareholding comes from the US?
Yeah, I don't have an exact number on that, and there's not, I guess, you know, complete transparency of every shareholder in any given day. Paul Fowler would be much better to answer that. I'd say right now, it's still a pretty small portion. You know, it's probably, you know, definitely less than 10%, so it is a market that we see a lot of opportunity to, you know, present the story and, and hopefully attract new shareholders from the US.
Could you summarize this year so far for Magna?
Yeah, this year's been a busy one. So we started off the year in January, you know, in a tough market, and. But we have a plan. You know, we are a mining company with a business plan, not just a story. So our plan was to get our permits in place, get our ore selling agreements in place, so we're in a position to move the project, the Crean Hill project, forward, into our advanced exploration stage, so we could start actually breaking rock and shipping, you know, ore to one of the mills here.
So in early March, we announced that our closure plan, which is sort of the major permitting document you need, had been approved and filed with the Ministry of Mines here in Ontario, and that basically takes the Crean Hill project from a state of closure, which was put into by Inco previously, to a state of production. So that is. It was a major milestone. Later in March of this year, we announced that we had completed and signed a definitive agreement with Vale Canada for us to sell or to their Vale and have it processed through their Clarabelle Mill. So again, a huge milestone for us. And in April, we announced that we had received confirmation that our permit to take water has been approved.
So now we have our permit to take water, which allows us to do water to mine. Now, we have different styles of mineralization at the Crean Hill project, and in any of our, You know, the listeners or our investors, would have been aware of our 109 Footwall Zone, which is a lower sulfide- typically higher PGM type footwall zone at Crean Hill, and then we have our typical contact-type ores, and we have other footwall zones like the 101, the 105, which are more nickel rich. But we wanted to try and maximize recoveries of PGMs, and try running that material through a, another mill, that's a smaller mill, that can be more customized, produce, you know, a, a batch concentrate, to try and maximize the amount of, of recovery of PGMs.
So in June, we announced that we had come to terms on a toll milling agreement with Glencore here in Sudbury to process 20,000 tons of 109 footwall material through their Strathcona Mill. So that was in June. So now with all of our permits in place required to move forward into advanced exploration, two agreements to process those materials, those ores, through both Vale and Glencore's mills in Sudbury, we're in a position to move forward. So in July, well, just, you know, last month, a month ago, we kicked off our first part of our advanced exploration, which is that 20,000-ton surface bulk sample from the 109 footwall. Contractors were mobilized. We had our first blast about 3.5 weeks ago, and, you know, we're right now stockpiling ore on-site.
Next week, we'll start trucking it. We've also started, just yesterday, dewatering the underground workings. So we started pumping water from the underground. A lot of things have been happening. It's really exciting. We had some investors out yesterday to site, and some analysts from some of the major banks, to show them what we're doing. It's very exciting and, you know, this is gonna lead into, you know, an updated PEA that we're working on right now, that'll incorporate the more than 25,000 meters of drilling that's been done at Crean Hill up until June of this year, since we acquired it. So that resource update will be incorporated into a new preliminary economic assessment, and we hope to have that out by the end of September.
And as well, you know, one of our other growth strategies, of course, is, you know, exploration. So we have three drills turning. So that's been... It's been a busy year with that, and we have a very targeted approach to what we're trying to do with this exploration program this year, and looking to discover a new footwall deposit, you know, 300 meters back into the footwall behind Crean Hill. So it's a... It's been a busy year, and there's lots I can't talk about as well that we're working on. It's pretty exciting growth initiatives as well.
You just got CAD 2 million in warrant exercises from Dundee Corp., the largest shareholder. What's the current cash position like, and how's the split between hard dollars and flow-through money?
Yeah, so, you know, we last announced our financials for Q1. So as of end of March 30, we had approximately CAD 9 million in cash and receivables, which is primarily our HST returns. And you know, most of that cash is the bulk of it is flow-through. You know, and hard dollars is basically what we need for our G&A and our salaries and those things. But all of our exploration is through that CEE. So we will be announcing, you know, our Q2 financials as of June 30, at the end of this month. So what I can tell you is, you know, we're on budget, we're on track.
You know, this extra CAD 2 million dollars of hard dollars gives us lots of, of cushion and allows us to you know, be comfortable and, and be able to wait to raise money when, when we think the time is right. And we've also made some of the announcements that will be coming out, you know, later this year.
How many warrants roughly remain now outstanding, and who are your main warrant holders? Just to... Good to clarify that.
Yeah. So, you know, the warrants we have outstanding, there's a few broker warrants that were issued when we did our financing, our last financing, but there was a half warrant in our 27-cent financing that we did back in 2022, and that was a CAD 20 million raise, primarily to fund the acquisition of Lonmin Canada and the Crean Hill project. So with that, there was approximately 36 million warrants issued. You know, between Dundee and Hawke's Point, you know, they held about half of that, as they funded about half of that that financing. So there's a handful of investors that hold the remaining amount, and those expire as of November 2025.
Let's move on to your bulk, the surface bulk sample. You're taking 20,000 tons from the 109 Footwall surface. Could you explain the process? I mean, how deep are you going? Give us an update on when do you expect to be finished and so on.
Yeah, so we're about, as of yesterday, we had about 8,000 tons of ore stockpiled. We have this next cut, so it was done in, you know, 3 cuts as we designed. Each cut's approximately 8 meters. So some of that was actually a bit of a ridge that protruded up, so the first cut leveled that off. The second cut, you know, went down 8 meters from that, and the third cut, again, will be about another 8 meters. And that third cut's about 12,000 tons of ore. So that's the plan. We should be completed all of the drilling by about the end of next week. And then we'll blast the following week, and we will, you know, stockpile muck that probably by mid next week.
We'll start hauling that ore out to the Strathcona Mill in anticipation of being processed in early September.
Okay, so processing is early September, and when will you receive results? I mean, if grades and recoveries are reconciling.
Yeah, so we should have, you know, all that information on, on the grades and, you know, some reconciling against the block model by about the end of September. You know, right now, our internal estimate for this 20,000 bulk sam- 20,000 ton bulk sample, it's gonna be something in the range of, 0.7 copper, 0.3 nickel, and, you know, 8-10 grams of PGMs. That's what, you know, our estimate is, so it'll be great to be able to reconcile against that and the block model and our understanding. And it really is testing not just sort of the higher-grade core at the 109, but taking it, you know, full sort of width of the zone, including a lot of the, the very low sulfide, PGM-type material sort of on the edges of it.
So this would be more representative of what we think an underground long-hole stope could look like, and it will give us a lot of good information.
Once you receive results, will you put out a press release that's o kay, this is what the grades, the average grade, this is, the recoveries that we got?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're gonna put out as much information as we can. We like to keep people informed, and we like to be transparent. You know, there's gonna be some information that we'll have to... It will be confidential just because of the Glencore, the CA that we signed, and they are a little bit cautious about what information they put out. Just, you know, being one of the two mills in Sudbury, and they like to keep things close to their chest, so to speak. So we'll release as much information on recoveries and data we can to the public.
The 109, there is a more sulfide-rich or more sulfide and copper-rich zone, and then you have the high-grade PGM, low sulfide zone. I mean, could you just try to paint a picture? I mean, how are these zones sort of separated, and which is the more dominant zone, et cetera?
So just to clarify the question, you're saying the high sulfides within the 109 versus the low sulfides within the 109?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And for the viewers, the low sulfide is high, high, high-grade PGM, and the low, high sulfide is copper-rich zone.
So this is something we've been, you know, growing and understanding over the last year since we've acquired the project. And the 109 Footwall Zone typically was thought of by the previous company, Lonmin Canada, that it was, you know, just one large zone, with no real trend or orientation to it, and sulfides were randomly, you know, distributed throughout it. Or you could have, you know, some high sulfides but very little continuity. What we started to do with our interpretation, the drilling we've done, and we start to understand there is a very consistent trend. And we moved our drill, started drilling from...
Instead of drilling from the west to the east, which is a lot of the drilling that's been done, we turned the drill around and drilled from the east to the west through the zone, which we found, you know, gave us a lot more information. And with that, we were able to consistently hit a higher-grade sulfide core, which was missed in a lot of the other drilling and often drilled parallel to. So there is a zone of, you know, approximately 1-4 meters wide that does have, in some cases, massive and semi-massive sulfides. Predominantly copper, chalcopyrite rich, but with some pyrrhotite and pentlandite, which is nickel mineralization. And we can see some really good grades, and we've reported some of those grades as well, in press releases over the last 12 months. So it does have this higher-grade core.
Now, what our test mining will do through this advanced exploration program, it'll help us better understand between drill holes, that continuity of that zone. It is possible that it does pinch and swell, but this is what we're gonna learn. You know, overall, when we do get to reconcile against our block model, it'll be quite telling to see, you know, did we underestimate or overestimate the amount of sulfides, the amount of nickel and copper in this, in this zone? Yeah, outside of that, as you get away from this core, both on the east and west side of the zone, you start to get less and less sulfides for the most part, and, you know, on the very peripheral areas, you can get extremely low sulfides, where you're down to, you know, less than 0.1 nickel, 0.1 copper.
But you can still have, you know, 10-12, and in some cases, you know, we have zones out there that were up to close to an ounce per ton of platinum, palladium and gold with almost no sulfides. We could call it no Cu-Ni-type mineralization, just a breccia and a matrix, but a lot of PGMs. So, yeah, that, that's kind of the way it's distributed, from what we've seen. Again, it's until you get in and you start drilling and blasting, you see the rock, and you can map it, you know, it's all interpretation. But I think we're gonna gain a lot of good information. And even as we're drilling and blasting these cuts, we're able to do some mapping and, and understanding, visually see these, these zones, these, structures, and that's gonna help us again as we move forward underground.
Recoveries for precious metals are around 70% for the Clarabelle Mill. Obviously, they should be higher for the Strathcona Mill as it's chosen to do the surface sampling through a toll milling agreement with Glencore. What... Could you tell us what you expect them to be for the 109?
Our expectation, actually, we're doing sort of a phased approach with this bulk sample. So, you know, time will tell, I guess, as we get the results. Our first pass on this 20,000-ton bulk sample, we're not gonna have the benefit of using new reagents that are not currently used at the Glencore mill, or any type of gravity concentration, which we believe, and based on some of the test work we've seen, can, you know, have fairly significant improvements, especially for gold and some of the platinum minerals. So, you know, we're gonna have recoveries, I would guess, somewhere in the range of 60%-75%, with sort of the basic using just the regrind and the more selective system they have there.
What we want to do after this test is look at, again, perhaps processing more material, but using then from all the knowledge we've learned from this test, perhaps input a gravity circuit into the mill, work with Glencore on that, and then also perhaps use additional reagents. And with that, you know, we would hope to get up then into the 80s and perhaps even, you know, close to 90% on some of these precious metals. So it's a bit of an iterative process, and again, this is why we're saying, you know, this is advanced exploration. We wanna maximize things, so we can do it right. And Glencore so far has been great to work with on this.
So it's a unique opportunity having two mills, one, you know, very large mill with Vale and Clarabelle, where everything's put through and, you know, gets blended together, that still can give good recoveries. And then another mill that's smaller, that allows us, that we can actually put batches through of our own material and work with them to do modifications. It won't only benefit, you know, the one on our footwall material, but, you know, could benefit some of their zones that are similar that they could also have higher recoveries of PGM, so it's very collaborative.
What magnitude of cost are we talking on putting in a smaller gravity circuit?
You know, I, I can't tell you, you know, hard numbers. You know, right now we're, we're in the testing phase. So if we're just to put in a small, you know, single gravity circuit, to put in, say, one Knelson Concentrator, or a Falcon Concentrator, we might... might be CAD 300,000-CAD 400,000. One of the things we have done in collaboration with the, you know, the Ontario Ministry of Mines and their Critical Minerals program, is they have a Critical Minerals Innovation Fund. And so we've applied for, a grant for this work that we're doing at, with Glencore, and this bulk sample and test work on the 109.
And, you know, we should find out before the end of the year if we're accepted for this grant, but that could fund a, a good portion of what we're doing. And then, if we decide next year to continue this test work, you know, we can apply for another grant. So it is, it is, you know, great to see support like that from the government to try and do things a little more innovatively and, you know, recover more critical minerals at the end of the day, because the more of this material that we can, recover, the lower the cut-off grade, and the more material ultimately we can mine, and, and there's nickel and copper with that. So it's a, it's a good program.
So what's the total cost then of taking the surface sample?
So the surface sample, you know, it's gonna have cost for the, the mining, the trucking, you know, all the management of that, so it'll be approximately CAD 1 million. And then there'll be a milling cost, but that'll come off of the, the actual, proceeds from, from the smelter at Glencore. So, you know, I can't speak to exactly what those numbers are, 'cause again, they're confidential, but, you know, the mining and, and the, the trucking part will be approximately CAD 1 million.
That's good. According to Valpa at least, we estimate that this should generate at least, you know, around, I don't know, CAD 5 million of free cash flow from the surface sample under some conservative prices. So when will you get paid then?
So approximately, the nickel and copper, we get paid a little bit sooner, in about four months after it goes through the smelter. And the precious metals will be probably about six months, is what they're saying. And again, just the base of the contract and when they get paid and from, on their end. So yeah, four to six months.
Could you expand a little bit on the dewatering that you're doing now?
Yeah. So the dewatering we're doing right now is kind of twofold. One is to set up for longer term for our underground advanced exploration in our portal. So that is, you know, that is gonna be needed, and we're gonna dewater as we're driving the ramp down, so it's not a huge upfront cost. It'll be a gradual, incremental cost over time. But the water- the dewatering we're doing right now, as I mentioned, we're gonna go down about 24 meters in total from the top of the 109 Footwall Zone, and we will get into an area where, you know, we're at a level below where the water level is in the underground mine. So we're pumping down right now, just so we can take that last cut. We have a pump in there that is a...
It's a temporary pump. It's not a long-term pump. It doesn't have enough head pressure to go, you know, more than probably 150 feet down. So it's in there temporarily now. We'll start pumping water, but the nice thing is, we have the hole cut in the shaft, we have the pipeline out, we have a sea can container on top of the old shaft cap, as a protection from that open hole. So everything's in place, that we can put the permanent pump in when it arrives, but it's a fairly long lead order time. It'll be another 3-4 months.
Well, that's great. So in other words, yeah, the portal is done. You have dewatered enough, so you would technically be able to go down underground, at least for the first, I don't know, 100 feet or something like that?
Yes.
So that's good. We'll come back to the surface, or the adits, in a couple of minutes. But first, I would like to speak a little bit about exploration. So this year, I mean, you have had really 3 focuses, I would say. You have, first, better define the 109 Footwall Zone, 2, regional drilling targets at Shakespeare, and then 3, you have the deep, Crean Hill Deeps, exploration, looking for a footwall. So with the 109, how much have you drilled, and what questions have you answered so far on that?
Yeah, so most of the drilling in the 109 has been to better define this higher grade core, you know, down to a depth of about close to 300 meters below surface. Now, the overall resource for the 109 is really only defined down to about 400 meters. So we do believe there's every indication that this zone continues down the back of the main ore body at the Crean Hill mine. And the main ore body was mined to a depth of 4,500 feet or about 1,300 meters. So there's a lot more exploration to do, but that is much more cost-effective and done from underground. So that's primarily what we've done, is to better define, you know, that first 300 meters, which is gonna be important in the early part of the mine life.
Now, the deep part of our exploration, to me is the most exciting part, and this is, you know, the culmination of, you know, 14, 15 months of good geology, good interpretation, and planning, and, you know, we've completed now 5 holes. We've done borehole EM and gravity on almost all those holes.
Mm-hmm.
Just one hole we haven't done gravity on yet. It is very, very positive, and all I can really say about it is, compared to any of the other footwall discoveries that have been made, in the Sudbury Basin by our team, and there's a number. You know, Gord Morrison, who works very closely with us, was the VP of exploration at FNX Mining. He was the head of brownfield exploration in Sudbury for Inco for 20 years. Discovered... Well, in total, between contact and footwall discoveries, he's made 16 discoveries in his career. Eight of those have gone into production. So there's no one else in Sudbury that's alive that can say that.
With all that being said, everything we're seeing in the footwall tells us that it's got the right environment, it's got the right rocks. We're seeing a rock type that is very, very key to these types of deposits, called quartz diorite, and its QD melt pods basically are the indicator that there's been hot fluids, and from the contact, that have come through these breccia corridors. So they're not... There's two types of breccias that we see here in Sudbury. There's like a hot breccia and a cold breccia. When you have a hot breccia, and you have these QD pods, there's always, always nickel, copper, PGM mineralization nearby. It's just one of those things. Now, it could be above, below, beside.
This is what we're figuring out right now, but we have EM anomalies, we have gravity anomalies, and we got the best team in Sudbury working on it, so it's very exciting, and we have still, you know, a healthy budget. Probably have at least another 8,000 meters in our budget for this year still to complete. So, yeah, it's an exciting area, and I think it has potential for a really significant discovery. It's. I said this yesterday when we had our investor tour, and I'll say it again today. I am as confident as I've ever been that we will make a discovery in the footwall.
Awesome. I have a few questions on that, but first, what is the size in terms of tonnage of the 109 Footwall Zone, ballpark?
So that'll come out, you know, and it varies based on cut-off grades, of course. So we will be putting that out with our updated resource, in, you know, later this quarter. So I'm gonna withhold from telling you the answer until it's filed. But, you know, overall, it is a small component. If you looked at the resource we have right now in the, in our, you know, technical files or any 43-101 mineral resource estimate, you know, the 109's only gonna be a very small part of that 31 million tons between open pit underground, indicated resource. So, you know, it's not, in comparison to the contact mineralization, it's only a very small part, but it's a very important part that's near surface, and it has some very good grade.
A deep footwall deposit is probably around 800-1,000, maybe even more than 1,000, 1,000 meters vertical depth. So what's the size of the price?
You know, these footwall deposits, especially in the South Range, are not huge. So they're anywhere from 1.5 million tons to maximum, maybe 5 million tons. You know, and we always sort of look at Creighton Mine, which is a Vale mine. It's operated for over 100 years. It's about 6 or 7 kilometers to the east of Crean Hill, and it has a number of these South Range footwall deposits hosted there. And, you know, they range, again, in that sort of 1.5 to about 5 million tons. So there's one in particular, it's called the 126 ore body, and Gord Morrison is quite familiar with it, and we use that sort of as the analogy.
So if you look at that deposit, it's about 150 meters vertically, about 100 meters wide, and about 20 meters thick. So that works out, you know, depending on specific gravity, sort of 1.5-2 million tons, and it's a very compact shape, and we had to wireframe this shape just to be able to, you know, move it around and understand, you know, in scale, what a small target that is when you're looking for something that is 1,000 meters deep. But, you know, the 126 ore body is about 4% nickel, 9% copper, and about 15 grams platinum, palladium, gold. So depending on what price deck you use, that's, you know, $1.5-$2 billion in situ value. So it's a very compact type deposit.
It's not super huge, but extremely valuable. And this is what footwall deposits are all about. So it is a, that's the prize we're looking for.
It was quite recently that you did a gravity geophysical survey. Previously, you just relied on borehole EM survey. So how can this gravity plus EM, could that help you rule out target, or does it just help you sort of define, refine your targeting?
Yes. So it is, it's interesting. So as we learn, you know, our first two holes we drilled were purely just stratigraphy holes, trying to understand, do we have the right rocks, you know, where we think they should be in the footwall? And then we can use those as platform holes for geophysics. So we learned a lot from those first two holes, and when we did our geophysics, we had multiple EM plates, multiple conductive zones, you know, off hole from those plates. So that gave us something to test. So, you know, to the best of our understanding, you know, at that point, and based on these EM anomalies, which again, is, you know, it's as much of an art as it is a science.
There's lots of almost an unlimited number of solutions for any of these anomalies on exact orientation and size and conductance. But we drilled our third hole and our fourth hole. What we've learned is, you know, within the sets, there are subtle sulfide anomalies. So there's sedimentary rocks in the footwall as well, and there's the breccias, but in these sets, you can get some sort of wispy little bits of pyrrhotite that can give you a conductance. And, you know, that helps sort of mask or hide some of the higher conductors that are around them when you're trying to interpret the results of that. So what the gravity does is you can have downhole gravity we're talking about is very precise, very specific, and very localized.
It'll tell you, okay, there is a dense body, you know, off of this hole, approximately, let's say, 150 meters. And when that coincides also with a conductor, well, now that becomes, you know, just a more interesting target to try to understand. So that's really what the gravity does. On its own, it's not extremely useful, but it is very complementary to the EM. So that's what we've been doing, and we've been able to, you know, continue to narrow down and zone in. And we've also learned that, you know, the types of geophysics we're using is EM.
Now that we know there's some, you know, minor sulfides in some of the sedimentary rocks that can give us, you know, subtle responses, we're using a different frequency with our borehole geophysics that'll only pick up high conductors, and that helps knock out a lot of the noise. Again, these are the things we're learning as this is progressing, but, you know, we do have a strong conductor in that area where we would expect it to be. So we're very excited still, and we think there's, you know, as much potential as there was when we drilled our first hole, and we haven't really concluded that anything is... that it's not there.
I mean, will you release assays on the first five holes, or how are you thinking around that?
Yeah, like, you know, we will, when we have, assays available that are material, we have to release them. So yeah, we will update as we're going. But again, you know, the first holes were purely platform holes. You know, if we had anything material to release, we would've released it by now. But this is exploration, and, and we're still, like I said, very excited on what we're doing, and it is truly, this is the stuff that exploration geologists live for. It is true exploration, and it's an exploration in a camp that we understand very well. A similar types of deposits have been discovered by the team, so it's not, you know, greenfield exploration that, you know, there's no information.
There's a lot of information we have now to, to better target on, and I think we're honing right in on, on something.
Let's go to Shakespeare exploration. You have tested and released assays on the Palladium Valley target. Have you ruled out that target, or does it merit follow-up drilling?
Yeah, that's a great question, and I think it's a you know interpretation ongoing. So we've drilled a couple holes out there, and you know interpretation is ongoing. You know, there's definitely interesting geology, there's definitely sulfides. You know, but what we're looking for is something really big and really significant. As a company now with over 50 million tons of nickel and copper indicated resources, you know, we have a lot of resource. So anything now that's gonna be material to us, you know, needs to be have some size and scale and grade. So you know we're doing that interpretation out there. Right now at Shakespeare, the drill is parked. The drillers have taken a few weeks of vacation, and that gives us a chance to do this interpretation that we're working through.
So, yeah, that's going well, but at the moment, we're not drilling. Definitely warrants follow-up drilling, but we gotta do the, you know, the geology work in the background first.
Could you also give us an update on the drilling at the Stumpy Bay and other potentially, well, and potentially other targets at Shakespeare?
Yeah. So, you know, the Stumpy Bay, we've drilled two holes, and it's you know, I think gone very well out there, in an area that's never been drilled before. Like, the portion of this Stumpy Bay property that we were testing, yeah, is totally new, never been tested. So these first two holes we've drilled have given us a lot of information. And again, you know, there'll be interpretation and follow-up on that. It looks like it has potential to be a you know, a fairly extensive copper zone. The question is, you know, does it get significant enough where it could be a standalone deposit?
Near surface, there's a zone of about 400 meters that is in a shear zone with copper mineralization, sort of ranging from 0.5% to 2% copper over, you know, 0.5 meter to up to 3 meters wide. So there's known copper mineralization throughout that area. Further on the property, we have our Spanish River Mine, which is basically on the same structure that hosts Stumpy Bay. It was a copper mine that produced, you know, I believe it was about 1,000,000 tons of copper back in the sixties and early seventies, from a ramp going underground. So a small copper mine, produced for a few years, but along these same sort of systems and shear zones.
So, you know, Stumpy Bay has at least that much potential, but really, we're trying to understand, where did all this copper come from? Where did it feed into these shear zones? And is there a magmatic source that we're only seeing sort of the near surface expression of it, through the shear zone? And that's kind of what we're... The thesis we're testing out there, which is, you know, could be very significant, but again, it's exploration and it's in an area we don't have much information, especially, you know, at any depth from surface. So these first two holes, very good, doing lots of work with them. We're gonna be doing some more geophysics with it, interpretation, and then, you know, hopefully some follow-up drilling this fall.
How many assay results in terms of meters are remaining to be released, and what's the timing of assays?
Yeah, I should have asked Dave King this question before our call, 'cause I don't have that up-to-date number right now at my fingertips. But, you know, there's still-
That's fine.
You know, with the three drills we do have turning at Crean Hill right now, we have a little bit of a backlog. We're probably behind, you know, by 1,000 or 1,200 meters in logging. So we have a lot of samples that are, you know, going to be going out, and with that, we also have... You know, some of our results are a bit delayed as well. But, you know, I would say there's thousands of assays probably still that we're waiting on to come in. They'll either be going out shortly, that will be coming back or we'll be receiving, you know... Or we have partial holes received already. So lots, lots of drilling, lots of results, and with that, there's lots of interpretation.
You know, the point of drilling is, as much as most junior companies, you know, would disagree, but the truth is, it's not for marketing purposes, it's for science. And the work comes when we get the results is looking at these results in detail and understanding what the rocks are telling, you know, our geologists and then, you know, deciding where to drill those next holes. So yeah, it's quite an iterative process, but, you know, I respect our team, and they take that kind of methodical approach.
Based on what you know now, how will you allocate your remaining meters for the rest of the year?
Yeah, that's a great question, and, you know, I think we need to allocate them to targets that are gonna be meaningful to, to what Magna wants to accomplish. So new discovery, so drilling holes that are well thought out, that have potential to make a meaningful material discovery, such as, you know, our deep part of the, the Crean Hill footwall. There will be a little bit of drilling, that we need to support sort of early mine planning, that we will be doing with one of these drills. So some shallower holes, sort of in the first, 200-250 meters of the mine, just to better understand, you know, the continuity of some zones as we look at designing, you know, mine plans in those areas.
So there will be some of that drilling, but that's gonna be a fairly small component. Most of our holes and most of our meters will go for, for pure exploration, and we don't have it all allocated yet. You know, some of that's gonna come out of the interpretation of the drilling that we've done already and, you know, and, and where we decide to drill those holes. But I would think that most of it will probably go to, Crean Hill and those deep, footwall exploration targets.
Let's speak about the Advanced Exploration, ADEX. You're updating the Mineral Resource Estimate in the coming months. What do you expect to change in the new resource or with the new resource?
Well, we're using a different approach as far as, you know, our cut-off grades with the PEA. So the resource itself, it'll be updated. We're not going to have an open-pit resource. That'll probably be the biggest difference. Whereas our current mineral resource estimate has an open-pit component, and then an underground component at a higher cut-off grade. This will just be underground only, and that is because our view right now is based on our ore selling agreement with Vale. Underground makes the most sense, raising our cut-off grade and mining, you know, higher margin, higher value ores. So that is gonna be a difference. So the tonnage will come down somewhat because our last...
Our current resource right now, our open pit cut-off is about 0.3, and our underground is 1.1. So looking at a 1.1 nickel-equivalent cut-off grade for the entire resource, you know, the overall tons will come down, grade will go up.... That's kind of the general idea. And then a lot of the drilling that we've done has been focused on, that will be included, is focused on the 101, the 105, and the 109 Footwall Zones, as well as some drilling in the contact mineralization. But for the, you know, the bulk of that has been drilled off quite well in the past by Inco, when the mine was in operation. And, so better definition on those Footwall Zones.
Again, understanding them better and being able to better model those, those units is gonna give us more accuracy, and I would expect higher grade for those footwall zones than what was in the previous model.
Are you going to raise the Cut-off Grade for the underground?
For the PEA, for the resource, I would expect us to keep it at 1.1%, and just have no open pit resource. But in the PEA, our approach is going to be to have a high cut-off grade, higher cut-off grade than we used in the previous PEA by quite a bit, and that'll be for the first number of years of mining. And then once we have development in place, you know, a number of working levels, we'll look at having incremental stopes at a lower cut-off grade, and that's based on... Once you have development in place on a certain level, the cost to mine one more ton, if you're not displacing a higher grade ton at depth, is quite low. It's a really, it's an incremental cost.
If you have trucking capacity and drilling capacity, then to take that extra stope, let's say that's at a 0.9% cut-off as opposed to a 1.2% cut-off, is quite, quite marginal. And adding in those extra tons later on, once that development's done, we think is, is quite beneficial. So that type of approach, and it's still we're working on exactly what that looks like, what the right cut-offs are, what the right throughputs are, when incremental ore may come in and not impact the base case sort of plan. That's what we're sort of working on right now in the PEA. But that's the general approach. So it'll be different, and I think it's going to be quite, quite robust in the fact that we have a lot of optionality on how we do this.
There's a big resource, and we're really looking at it again, quite uniquely. And although we're taking a lot of the good information and the work that was done from the previous PEA, we're also open to doing things differently.
So in other words, it will be quite different from the last year's PEA. Will you still have sort of one main scenario in which you, this, in this case, sells all the ore to a third-party mill? Or how will that... Or will there be some sort of Shakespeare component baked into the PEA?
No, we're not planning on doing a Shakespeare component. You know, we did that exercise, and I think it was, it was positive to show there is a, there is a benefit, but this PEA will assume a life of mine ore selling.
Part of the reason, at least my understanding, is to the PEA to easier be able to secure streaming and royalty financing. Is that really necessary since most streaming royalty companies have in-house capabilities to model resources?
Well, they can model the resources, absolutely. How are you gonna mine them? That's up to us. And, and that's what you base, you know, any kind of DCF model for a royalty or a stream, is how many ounces are we gonna get in which years? And, and that's how they can, you know, evaluate it and value it. But, so it really does come down to what are we going to do? You know, if they were to use the previous PEA, and we're gonna do an open pit, and, you know, we're gonna mine 0.3%, well, that would be different than, you know, what we're proposing in this PEA and what we believe is our, you know, very close to what our, our final mine plan will be.
So it is important to, you know, properly communicate that, especially if we want to get the best value possible and, you know, and de-risk it as much as possible for those, those royalties and streamers. So it is important to get this out, and so it's... This is the plan. This is what we're gonna start doing. We're gonna have more information, you know, by the end of September on actually the 109 and how that, reconciles against the block model. All these things are big advantages, and the more we de-risk the project, we believe the more value we can get out of, any royalty or stream we may sell.
How much money, a ballpark, would you like to raise or, or not raise, or receive from royalty or streaming financing in order to start right ahead with ADEX?
Yeah, you know, again, this will partially come out of the PEA numbers, but, you know, like we've said before, in the previous PEA, it's kinda estimated, you know, CAD 48 million with a CAD 8 million contingency. I think that the total cost will be, you know, very similar to what that had in that PEA. You know, we're looking at ways to bootstrap and offset some of that by mining some higher grade early on. But how much of that will be a royalty and a stream, and at what stages, you know, that's still up in the air, and I won't comment, but it'll be probably less than CAD 40 million. But we'll see.
Could you add some color to what type of royalty or stream that you would prefer for, to put on Crean Hill?
Yeah. Like, we do really think that there's a lot of upside potential with platinum and palladium, so we wouldn't want to necessarily sell too much of that at these current prices, which are, you know, at sort of multi-year lows. So ideally, you know, we, we'd be quite open to a royalty on just the gold component within the project. We think that gold has moved very nicely. I think everyone can agree, hitting all-time highs recently, and we think leveraging some of that would be, you know, beneficial to the project... and our cost of capital. But again, it really comes down to just the structure of how we want to do it, and what makes the most sense, and we're still in discussions and open to ideas from the royalty companies.
What it ends up being, you know, it will definitely only be a small portion of the overall precious metals. We don't think we wanna give up too much, and we don't have to, because there's a lot.
So then at what price does equity become a serious contender to streaming or royalty financing?
Yeah, like, again, it really depends. I think equity is always, you know, a sort of a first choice, to be honest, for a, you know, pre-cash flowing company. And, so that mix of equity royalties, you know, I kind of don't have a price to say if we were at this price, that we would go out and raise more of it in equity. That's really a decision at the board level. But yeah, we would definitely wanna see higher... our share price much higher before we go out and raise any considerable amount of equity, for sure.
It looks like there will be some equity component regardless of the royalty or stream that you announce.
Yeah. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be in the first year of development. It could be later on. So, that's what we have to look at, is do we raise it all upfront? Do we want to have, you know, the first CAD 20 million that's going in is gonna come from a royalty, and then, you know, once we've even further de-risked the project by getting into mining areas and, you know, starting to receive revenues, at that point, raise some equity. You know, there's a lot of factors out there, and these are the things we have to consider and look at as a board and come to that decision, but it doesn't have to be all upfront necessarily.
Post-financing, you now have the money in your coffin. So could you give us an overview of Adex and sort of the work associated with it, and also a timeline?
Yeah. So it's a, You know, we're pretty much ready to go from a standpoint of we have the contractors that are on site right now are the same contractors that we'll be using for the underground. So they have their surface division working right now, but, you know, they have their trailer on site, so everything's there. We're dewatering. That infrastructure's there. So we're pretty much ready to go. And, you know, we're even debating, do we want to, while we have the surface crew there, square up the portal location and, and get some of that work ready, so we don't have to remove back in the, drills in a few months? So it's pretty simple.
We'll start collaring the portal, you know, get underground, set up some ventilation once we get the ramp down far enough, where we'll be able to heat mine air during the winter. And then it's just straightforward, drill, blast, muck, and, you know, dump waste on a waste pile until we get to the first level, where we'll be cutting into the 109 Footwall. So it's a pretty straightforward process, nice and simple. It's the way I like it.
Excellent. And, what mining rates would you expect, 6 months and 12 months from starting at the work at ADEX?
Yeah. Like, at 12 months, it'll still be... It won't be continuous. So we'll get into areas as we're opening them up, and we'll be still focusing on, you know, sealing out certain zones where we want to get better understanding, 'cause it will be a lot of learning. You know, by 12 months, we'll be out, and we'll have exposure and be cutting into the 109, the 101, and some of the intermediate zones. We'll be taking probably some of our first stopes. So, you know, most of them in the first 12 months, most of that will be development ore. So we'll be actually drilling and blasting with a jumbo, developing into the different cuts and establishing the sills, where longhole drilling will take place for our first test stopes. So that's what the first month will look like.
So there'll be times where we'll be shipping lots of ore, and there'll be times where we'll be primarily developing in waste, and there'll be, you know, a pause on shipping ore. But looking out beyond 12 months, that's when it'll start to become, you know, ramping up sort of 200, 300, 500, you know, probably within 18 months, up to about 800-900 tons a day. Now, that can be accelerated. You know, it just costs a little bit more money. So we'll see how the first 12 months goes, but if we wanted to add in another development crew, we could accelerate that. There's just some additional cost to it.
At what point do you think you will be at sort of commercial, say, 1,500-2,000 tons per day?
So, you know, again, the PEA will speak to a lot of this, so I don't want to say too much ahead of time, but, you know what? Once we're down below the 750-foot level, we'll have enough workplaces that we could start mining at sort of commercial production levels. And then we could do that relatively quickly, well, within sort of 24 months. And again, all of that, there's opportunity to speed it up just by adding in more equipment, more people, because there'll be lots of workplaces. But yeah, it's a, it'll come out in the PEA. So everybody's gotta wait and see, some of those exact numbers, but things can move ahead pretty quickly. And again, one of the important things is really we're looking at, you know, bringing as much cash flow forward.
So getting into some of the higher grade areas. Now that we have definitive terms from Vale, you know, we can, you know, calculate what the revenues would be much more accurately, and get into those areas where we can generate more revenue early on and be able to reinvest that into the development work to grow production faster. So that really will be the focus in the early years.
How does Shakespeare, i.e., the hub and spoke model, fit into this?
So, you know, we think that, again, Shakespeare is a really important part of what we're trying to build here in Sudbury, but we're not going to go out and take on a big debt financing and, you know, project financing to build Shakespeare too quickly. So ideally, you know, and our vision is to have three mines in production within five years here in Sudbury, and that'll come from a number of different ways. But one of the ways I would say that it will come from, as part of our plan and our strategy, is through acquisition of non-core assets here in Sudbury, much like we did with Crean Hill. So we'll look at building Shakespeare and creating that hub-and-spoke when we have the cash flows to really support that construction.
You know, we can take on hopefully some, some lower-cost debt, maybe have some programs that the Canadian federal government, you know, to support critical mineral production can, can offer, such as the Canada Growth Fund. But really, that's our, our plan right now. So we're not overly, you know, advancing Shakespeare from a project standpoint this time. We're still very, very, you know, excited and interested about the exploration potential. There's a lot of really good targets over that 15-kilometer trend from Shakespeare back to the Sudbury Igneous Complex that have not been tested or not, you know, well understood. So we're gonna keep working on the exploration side of things, but we're not rushing out to build it anytime soon. But it's still, as a longer-term strategy, something that, you know, we have and will continue to, to have.
I think that, you know, down the road someday, even if we get incentivized by Vale or Glencore to sell our ore to them long-term and not, not build another mill in Sudbury, I think that anyone looking to get a foothold in Sudbury, you know, in a great jurisdiction, and have exposure to the mix of, of commodities that we mine here, having the ability to build their own mill, if you're a, you know, a mid-tier or another major company, and produce your own concentrates, is gonna be very strategic, and it may ultimately be the reason why Magna gets acquired in the future.
What's the status of the various grants and other government funding programs that you have applied for?
Great question. So a couple of weeks ago, we had MPs, the local MPs, Viviane Lapointe and Marc Serré out to site, along with some people from the Ontario Ministry of Mines and, and some of the local First Nations, and, you know, we had that conversation with them. We've applied for basically all the grants that are available out there, both through provincial, federal, and, and even through the US Department of Defense.
You know, it's been slow, and I think that there's been very few announcements on any of these, and I think the government agencies who have, you know, promoted these programs, are taking some pressure from groups like Magna, saying: "You know, when are these decisions gonna be made and these funds allocated?" You know, I believe there will be some first allocations of funds from the federal Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, and we've applied for three different grants under that program. Two for Shakespeare, one for Crean Hill, and that would be specifically for establishing grid power and not relying on diesel power generators at the mine site. So we're hoping that will be announced, you know, soon.
I haven't got any confirmation from anyone yet on specific timelines, and, yeah, we'll just have to wait and see.
Well, how are discussions with OEMs and other strategic investors going?
Yeah, well, you know, we do talk to most of the OEMs, and it's an interesting environment right now. As I'm sure a lot of people recognize, you know, a lot of economies are sort of under pressure with higher interest rates. You know, people sort of saying, "Are we in a recession or not in a recession?" Car sales have been way down. You know, a lot of people will talk about numbers for EV adoption and EV sales being down and not meeting forecasts. I don't think any of the automakers are meeting forecasts right now. You know, compared to a few years ago, just looking around Sudbury car dealerships, their lots are full and, you know, it's much more expensive now to buy a new vehicle.
So the OEMs, I think, are, you know, taking a little bit of a step back and looking at where they're investing in and what their plans will look like over the next few years. But I think that, you know, they're still all very interested in in critical minerals. I still think they're interested in having a good supply chain. And they're all... everyone that we've talked to has an EV strategy, and they see it as a, you know, at least a portion of their production going forward, so they wanna be established. And I think much like, you know, some of the mining companies like Magna, that are looking for, you know, working with the government, so they have an advantage over, you know, China and some other Asian markets.
Here in North America, where our labor costs are higher and environmental regulations are much higher, you know, they're waiting to see some of those programs come into play so they can be a little more competitive here and bring more production and more of the manufacturing, you know, here in North America.
Do you think that Crean Hill plus Shakespeare is large enough to attract such, I mean, strategic investors and OEMs? I mean, we have seen companies with very low grade, but large resources, you know, get a strategic investments in Canada.
Well, I think that, you know, OEMs are very good at what they do best, which is building cars. They have a lot to understand when it comes to, you know, the upstream of where their, the commodities they need to build their, their cars and the batteries that will power their EVs are gonna come from. So long and short of it is, I think as they understand, sort of the capital costs that go into some of these huge low-grade projects and the long timelines to get them permitted and, you know, other risks around that, you know, they are going to tend to go more to traditional, sort of, existing type sulfide deposits that are in production, such as the types of deposits that are here in Sudbury.
So yeah, I guess to answer your question, the reason they're talking to us, and we get a lot more inbounds than actually we're reaching out to OEMs, is because of the jurisdiction, the type of nickel deposit that, you know, we have here. And yeah, it does have that size and scale. Now, obviously, they're gonna need a lot of different supply sources. It won't be one source, especially for North American OEMs. But yeah, you know, we're gonna have potential for some very significant amounts of nickel and copper and other, you know, precious metals that may be necessary for these OEMs.
What potential for acquisitions are you seeing today in Sudbury?
Well, I'll... You know, that's a great topic that I wish I could talk in great detail about. What I can say about it is, you know, our company, one of our core pillars of growth is built around, you know, acquisition of non-core assets. You know, we proved that in 2022 with the acquisition of Crean Hill. So there's a number of other acquisition targets we have here in Sudbury that we have been working on, and discussing with the majors.
So, you know, these are projects, you know, very similar to Crean Hill in the sense, past producers, some of them have long track records of production, still remaining, you know, large resources, and I'm talking, you know, some of them could be in excess of 10 million tons of existing historic resources, with that potential for some really high-grade footwall discoveries. Especially some of these older properties that have been, you know, closed for a number of decades, long before, you know, footwall deposits were even a thought by the majors here in Sudbury. So what remains is still, in some of these cases, some really good potential. So those are the type of projects we're looking for. We are in discussions on, you know, a number of these types of deposits with majors here in Sudbury.
And, you know, I think we've proven that we can move a project from a state of closure to, you know, having permits to start drilling and blasting and shipping ore, which is a huge vote of confidence for the majors here in Sudbury, that, you know, we would be a good partner and a supplier of ore to their mills. So all of this together, I think, puts us in, you know, a very good position to make additional acquisitions here in the basin and grow our company that way. So it is something that's ongoing. There is opportunity. There's no big for sale signs up where, you know, people can just walk in and buy assets. It's a lot of work, it takes a lot of time, and relationship building.
Are you just looking for assets similar to Crean Hill, sort of, past producing assets where you can see some sort of a experiential exploration upside, or could bigger packages or packages that include perhaps even producing assets be in the cards?
You know, like any major mining company in the world, once you get to a certain scale, you wanna focus on your tier one material mines and projects. And, you know, for any majors that... You know, in Sudbury, there are some smaller mines that are operating right now, that could be deemed non-core to their owners. And, you know, these mines just maybe don't have quite, you know, the throughput or the ease of mining, that the majors want, and they have a limited number of people. So there's a number of reasons why they may wanna sell a producing mine. And yeah, we're absolutely, you know, open to discussing producing mines, and, you know, I would not... No one should be surprised if in the next couple of years we buy producing assets in the basin.
How would you potentially fund an acquisition with a price tag, say, pulled above CAD 20 million?
Yeah, anything, you know, from any price really, we wanna put as little cash up front on closing as possible. Having deferred payments and/or milestone payments to us is a great, you know, attribute of any deal. Being able to push some of that down down further into the future, to a point when we think, you know, we can bring these assets into production, producing cash flow, and at some point then, there'd be another payment made. That's the kind of risk we'd wanna share, and we'd want to not have to put a lot of cash up front. So that's kind of how we would want to structure a deal. You know, when you think about the major companies here, if they're looking to divest something, it's not to raise capital, not in Sudbury.
Divesting non-core assets, one of the biggest challenges with it is there's probably not gonna be a lot of cash coming in, so it's just getting their attention and saying: "We wanna work on this with you." So there has to be another motivation other than cash, and, and often that motivation is we need feed for our mills or, or, you know, we just do not wanna have any, you know, deal with, you know, another small mine or, you know, any liabilities to go with that. So these are the kind of motivations, and, and really, cash probably is not one of the biggest ones, so we would hope to have very little cash up front, defer as much as we can, and, and then, you know, pay for that down the road.
Well, we only have one question left, really, and that is: Where do you envision Magna Mining in two years?
In two years, I see Magna Mining having additional assets in the basin. So I think within two years, we can acquire additional assets. I think we'll have multiple, at least two projects, that are shipping ore, either through advanced exploration and bulk sampling or commercial production, with a pipeline of projects ahead of us, to develop. So yeah, it'll be two years from now, we're gonna be, again, a very busy company, with a lot on the go, but we're gonna have cash flow, and most likely from more than one operation.