The silver market is back with Scotiabank’s silver price prediction for 2022 to maintain an average price of $24.50 per ounce. Metallic Minerals (TSXV:MMG, OTCQB:MMNGF, Forum) – a Metallic Group Company – is a Canadian exploration that is focused on developing high-grade silver and gold projects in Canada. Notably, the company’s core Keno Silver Project is located in the historic Keno Hill Silver District in Canada’s Yukon Territory. The company also has its La Plata silver-gold-copper project, which is located in the La Plata district of the Colorado Mineral Belt. The Market Herald’s Brieanna McCutcheon was joined by the company’s president, Scott Pestel, to discuss what the company’s been up to and what shareholders and investors can expect moving forward.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
TMH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about your background first and then kind of go into the history of the company?
SP: Well, I’ve been with metallic mineral since 2016, it’s founding. And I’ve served as vice president of exploration since then with the recent appointment to the president’s role as of about four or five months ago and am a geologist by training. So, I come at it from the technical side, but I’m learning a lot about the business side as we go and having a great time doing it.
TMH: And I know that the company’s had some exciting results over the last six months, can you update us on what has happened at the Keno hill project in the Yukon?
SP: You captured it very well in that we are a precious and base metal-focused exploration development company. Our flagship property is the Keno hill silver project in the Keno hill silver district. Over the last hundred years, there’s been over 200 million ounces of silver production in the district and currently a hundred million ounces of silver and reserves and resources with Alexco resources, our neighbor in the district. We have the second-largest land holding and we’ve been actively exploring out there since 2016. Our 2021 field season was the biggest we’ve had out there to date and we were able to accomplish three significant goals. The first being that we were very successful in expanding the footprint of our existing advanced stage targets, particularly the Caribou and Formo target areas as we move those towards resource definition stage probably in the coming year or so, most specifically at our Formo target. We drilled 4.6 meters of nearly a thousand gram per tons silver, and also identified some broad zones including 22.8 meters at over 200 grams per silver grams per ton silver equivalent.
So very significant results on our advanced stage targets. We also continue to work on our Keno East targets where we’re finding broad mineralization with results in 2021 up to 112 meters at nearly 40 grams per ton, silver, which is a significant amount of silver, very comparable to the high-grade vein style. Lastly, we advanced on several new targets and new recent discoveries that have been made through soil sampling and geophysical work. And our progress moving forward is really going to be focused on resource development at our advanced stage targets.
TMH: Well I don’t know if you have anything else to update us on because that was a lot of significant results that you gave us, Is there anything else you can divulge about maybe the La Plata Project in Colorado?
SP: La Plata is a very significant project for us, as well. We could call it our second flagship project, if you will. It’s in Southwest Colorado. This was a historical high-grade silver-gold and Telluride mineral narrow vein underground producing district and in the 50’s and the 70’s, Rio Tinto and Freeport, a couple of majors, came in and did significant exploration work but the project really sat idle for about 50 years. We’ve been able to come in, do confirmatory work since our acquisition of the project in 2019 and build a resource off the backs of the majors that is nearly a, a billion pounds of copper at a 0.25% cut off for an inferred resource that contains 15 million ounces of silver as well. The resource itself can be expanded in all directions and that should be a focus of our 2022 work going forward. But we also have 16 untested geophysical targets and geo targets that represent possible pre centers, and additional copper pre centers that have been untested. And we’ll look forward to advancing those as we go as well into the 2022 field season.
TMH: Well, and that kind of ties into my next question. Would that be something that you’re going to be, I guess you just answered it. Yes. You will be looking into that. Is that part of the other milestones that you might be looking to achieve in the coming year or what else can shareholders look forward to?
SP: The biggest thing is we’re launching field programs very shortly on both the Keno Silver project and our La Plata project and we should have some formal news about that as we move forward here. In addition, we’ve actually been able to raise a significant amount of funds, around 4 million in flow-through funding, at a premium to the market. And lastly, we do have an alluvial royalty portfolio in the Klondike district of the Yukon, and we expect to have a couple of major operators on those alluvial leases and hope to be moving towards royalty production on those in the very near term.
TMH: And last question, I think of the day before I let you go here on with your busy day, is there anything I missed that you’d like to highlight?
SP: I don’t think so, other than the fact that one of our more recent results was, or news releases was May 4th, we announced the dedicated new community relations and regulatory team for the company, which I think is a very strong sort of statement for a small mid tier junior company like we are. But it shows our, our dedication to, and commitment to applying, really best practices and to build partnerships and long-lasting relationships in the communities that we work in.
For more information, visit www.metallic-minerals.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a sponsored article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.