Publisher's Note: Today we're bringing you the transcript of Gerardo Del Real's exclusive interview with Morgan Poliquin, the President and CEO of Almadex Minerals (TSX: AMZ) (OTCQX: AXDDF).
Almadex just landed a major investment from Newcrest Mining, and it will bring big changes to the company. Read on to find out what this means for Almadex as a company, and its El Cobre property exploration program.
To your wealth,
Nick HodgePublisher, Outsider Club
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with the Outsider Club. Joining me today is president and CEO of Almadex Minerals, Dr. Morgan Poliquin. Morgan, how are you this morning?
Morgan Poliquin: I'm excellent, thank you very much. I hope you're well too.
Gerardo Del Real: I am. I am. Thank you for asking.
Congratulations are due. Big news just out this morning. Newcrest is acquiring an indirect 19.9% interest in El Cobre, through the investment of 19 million dollars Canadian, and Almadex will be spinning out the mineral exploration and royalty assets. We've seen this before with Almaden, we're now seeing it with Almadex, but first off, congratulations, Morgan.
Morgan Poliquin: Thank you very much. Really appreciate that.
Gerardo Del Real: I know early on in the El Cobre project's history, there were a lot of critics that pointed at the grade and said that it was initially too low grade, and that you were drilling too many holes from the same drill pad, and there's been a lot of commentary. This has to be a huge validation for both the process that you take in exploration, the way that you do it, and for the project.
Newcrest of course, it goes without saying, they know what they're doing. They're one of the best explorers and producing companies out in the business, but can you share the details of the news today, Morgan, please?
Morgan Poliquin: Sure, I'm happy to do it for all of the above. Well look, I've been championing this project here for 25 years, believe it or not - when I first went there, almost 25 years - and really believe that this has a unique geochemical thumbprint on a planetary scale, meaning, this is the environment geologically, where you can get big deposits. And that's why I've been so insured that our company maintained its interest and its focus on this target over those years, even though we've had joint venture partners and different things in the past.
So, here we are today, with the opportunity to really explore it thoroughly. We've found a number of different porphyry centers on the project. It's a huge area and it requires a lot of exploration.
But at the same time, we've got over the hump in terms of risk, to a certain extent, with the drilling we've done. What I mean by that is, you know, you're beyond proof of concept. You're into, now, the stage of drilling where you're looking to define the actual potential here. We think that the Norte Zone, we're into resource drilling very quickly, type of drilling, more detailed drilling.
So, it's an exciting time and we're delighted to have Newcrest join us on this next journey, which allows us to be really aggressive.
I think exploration has long odds of success and anyone who criticizes exploration probably doesn't understand that and what it takes to get out there and actually try to find something new in a new area.
So, Newcrest recognized the opportunities and the geologic environment and the potential here clearly, and it's going to be very exciting. We've decided to put this into a new entity that can wholly focus on it and that will enable us to, again, separate our earlier-stage exploration endeavors and put those into a new co. that can get back to, again, getting over the hump as I put it. Making a new discovery at some stage.
So, we think we have a really clear, the mechanics here are really clear in terms of how we want to run our businesses as a whole. We want to keep early-stage exploration separate from advanced property exploration and development. That's what we did with the Ixtaca discovery and that's what we'll do here with El Cobre.
Moving forward with the new co., it is our focus to make another discovery. So, I think, hopefully, people - when they read through the news release, there's a lot of information to absorb - they'll see that that's the essential principal behind this and that the key aspect here is it allows us to focus very, very heavily on El Cobre and do the heavy lifting here that's required.
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Gerardo Del Real: You talked about the geologic profile that Newcrest was looking at, their experience and their background. For people that are new to the Almadex story, can you provide a bit of an overview of the project and the potential and what the next step is as far as exploration goes?
Morgan Poliquin: Well, porphyries of this kind, particularly, can come in clusters, which means that's there's more than one actual porphyry deposit center. So we feel, that this is that style of porphyry, a gold-rich environment, where you can have multiple, different intrusives.
There's a number of these in the world that are well understood. In fact, I think the reason why Newcrest - I don't want to put words in their mouth - might be interested in ours, is that their Arcadia district in New South Wales. I personally think that this has some general, geologic comparison to, that is multiple porphyry centers and multiple deposits and it's grown over time.
This exploration effort that we'll be undertaking is to explore all of those that we've currently defined and there may be more that we don't know about in terms of actual porphyry-mineralizing centers.
It's got a great location. In general terms, it's in Mexico, which is a mining country with a very significant mining history and mining's a significant contributor to the economy, so it's well understood and permitting is fairly well understood. It's a well-trodden path in Mexico, so we have general jurisdictional advantage.
We've also got the fact that we're near tremendous infrastructure. We're close to a major power plant, a highway, road access to the project, and low elevations. A lot of porphyry are in very rugged places because they're formed in - often - mountain forming environments. So the Andes' very high elevation areas are where you find a lot of porphyry.
In this case, we're 100 to 200 meters for the most part, or in that realm, above sea level, with good access. So, all those things put together combines with the great geologic environment I was explaining before, make this a fairly unique target.
I think there's not too many projects where you actually found significant and potentially economic grades over good intervals this close to infrastructure. So that's the opportunity and in order to realize that opportunity, it requires, basically, a whole lot of drilling.
We found something we didn't expect last year, which was an enriched zone near surface which I think speaks to the fact that exploration is... you know, when I was mentioning about criticism before, I fully understand people's lack of understanding of this project because when you get out there and drill, we surprise ourselves.
We couldn't have predicted... exploration is more about what you don't know and to do that you have to put yourself in the right spot geologically and I believe as an explorer, it has to also be the right spot to actually be able to develop a mine.
So, you put those two things together, the geologic opportunity with good infrastructure, and then it's down to drilling the heck out of it. So, I think Newcrest and Almadex are on precisely the same page there, and it will be, as I say, an exciting journey.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. And I understand the reorganization should be complete, or should close, by May of 2018, whereby current Almadex shareholders will receive one share of the new co., is that correct, Morgan?
Morgan Poliquin: That's right. That's the timing and of course we're in the process of a fairly well-trodden process in terms of the spin out and so on with the exchanges and the securities commission, so we'll be working through that.
We've done it before, as you mentioned off the top, with Almadex, so we'll be working diligently on that and look forward to reporting on that in due course.
Gerardo Del Real: We're looking forward to a lot of drilling. Morgan, congratulations once again.
Morgan Poliquin: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Gerardo.
Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.
For the past decade, Gerardo Del Real has worked behind-the-scenes providing research, due diligence and advice to large institutional players, fund managers, newsletter writers and some of the most active high net worth investors in the resource space. Now, he is bringing his extensive experience to the public through Outsider Club, Junior Mining Monthly, and Junior Mining Trader. For more about Gerardo, check out his editor page.