#PDAC is all about networking! 

I spoke with 31 companies at least 5 minutes or longer. Thirty had mentioned they've looked at CEO.ca but only a few admitted they were active members. Fifteen of those 31 knew who I was, @EvenPrime. This of course is biased as I already know 10 of those companies from previous #MIF #VRIC and #SubscriberSummits but interesting to note regardless.

WELCOME TO PDAC 2018

No shortage of advertisements ... 

@SaskExpress snapped this one at the Airport

Trade Floor before official opening

Luckily, I met @Stateside with http://statesidereport.com/ at #MIF the day prior as #PDAC is so large I did not bump into him. In fact, I did not see @MiningBookGuy @LucTenHave @Engineer @DellsVigor and a few others I had hoped to meet.

COMPANIES

[Sirios Resources] &[Azimut Exploration] 

$SOI and $AZM

  

I wrote an article last week on Sirios Resources and Azimut Exploration where I speculate that both companies are onto something that may join both properties 

 (Find the article here:  https://ceo.ca/@evenprime/sirios-resources-and-azimut-exploration )

[FPX Nickel]

$FPX

FPX is run by CEO, Martin Turenne. He frequents CEO.ca providing an abundance of quality posts under the pseudo name @martinturenne. I was very excited to meet him in person. He is an excellent young professional and I recommend anyone with questions to message him on CEO.ca or contact them on their website https://fpxnickel.com/

Prior to #PDAC I bumped into Brian Leni who mentioned how unique the Baptiste Deposit was. He is quite bullish on the company and believes it will be a hot company in the up coming nickel bull market. I also met Mr. John B. Gammon, a 77 year old director and large shareholder, and he also shares this bullish sentiment. 

@Leni has recently written an excellent article on FPX here:

http://www.juniorstockreview.com/2018/01/08/fpx-nickel-corp-undervalued-pure-nickel-play/

and mentioned them as a favorite while being interviewed at PDAC:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5TGN0knfgk

One aspect I found interesting was noting the location of the red in the image below.

The 2013 PEA Ultimate Pit is encapsulated by the square blocks. The 2017 drilling (right side of deposit in the rectangular box) indicated greater than 14% nickel. This substantially changed the dynamics of this deposit and a 2018 PEA indicates the viability of the project with an increase of indicated tonnage of 59%. What I find interesting is, "the Nickel found in the Decar deposit is in the form of Awaruite. This is a naturally occurring form of stainless steel which is advantageous to conventional processing and extraction techniques. Additionally, there are little sulphides present, meaning that both the host rock and tailings are non-acid generating, which is also important when permitting."  - Leni

EvenPrime #MarkMyWord: 

There is a high probability this will be one of my 2019 #StockPickingContest picks  

[Vendetta Mining]

$VTT

Vendetta quietly knocked it out of the park at #PDAC for the second year in a row. On Monday, March 5th they released the news:

https://ceo.ca/@newsfile/vendetta-reports-metallurgical-test-work-and-demonstrates

An excellent article throughout, but what really struck a cord was, "Transition Zone material produced a metallurgical performance equivalent to the sulphide zones."

Vendetta's wholly owned Pegmont deposit is progressing quite nicely and all the check boxes are now almost crossed off. I expect to see an increase in tonnage in their optimized open pit in April when the next resource update is released prior to them pushing forward on the PEA". This is a prime take-over target and was a solid 2017 #StockPickingContest pick of mine.

Confirmation of positive metallurgy in both the sulphide as well as the transition zone was a huge sigh of relief for management and shareholders alike. This photo was taken 'after' the metallurgy results were disclosed.

Kudos and hats off to the entire Vendetta team. 

As an aside, on March 15th I posted on CEO.CA Vendetta's channel , "With this news and the confirmation of the transition metallurgy last week, I will be in accumulation mode over the next few weeks. How could I not? If anyone still sees some risks I may be overlooking feel free to pm me, but to my understanding, this is now substantially derisked and ready to move - #BullishPrime -Do Your Own Due Diligence"

The stock rallied +20% shortly after. 

[Aston Bay Resources]

$BAY.V

One of my 2018 CEO.CA #StockPickingContest picks, $BAY is a company I feel will undergo a generous stock price appreciation due to the speculative nature of this play. I will keep this short and simple: Management believes they are sitting on concealed Sediment-Hosted Copper and Zinc Deposits. They've already proven high-grade copper and zinc mineralization at surface, also confirmed by over 9,000 meters of historical drilling at Storm (e.g. 110 m of 2.45% Cu) and Seal (e.g. 18.8 m of 10.6% Zn).

I was able to spend a great deal of time with CEO, Mr. Thomas Ullrich.  I asked the tough questions (which were brought up on CEO.ca ) such as past drilling results and BHP dropping the option. 

Mr Ullrich informed me that a re-evaluation of the geology was important to realizing potential targets and with the help of David Broughton, they were able to formulate a strategic plan moving forward. This was complemented when they completed a Falcon Plus Airborne Gravity Gradiometry survey;

https://ceo.ca/@fscwire/aston-bay-holdings-ltd-announces-preliminary-results

This redefinition has been very encouraging and has already attracted big names in the industry.

Additionally, the story becomes even more compelling as Aston Bay has brought in Alan King, a well known geophysical consultant, onto the company’s advisory board. King has significant international experience, including experience targeting stratiform deposits in sedimentary environments.

Because the location is so far north, the drilling season is late and short which is okay as they have a lot of work to do beforehand but I wouldn't want to miss being involved in this speculative play before they put a few drills into the ground. They are currently closing the last tranche of a private placement. 

Atlantic Gold
$AGB

I had some issues with my camera and lost a few photos so I do not have photos of Atlantic Gold at #MIF or #PDAC but I did get a chance to speak with both Chief Operating Officer, Maryse Belanger as well as Investor Relations Manager, Sean Thompson.

It is apparent they have strong convictions in this company and are very proud of what they have accomplished. This is one of my favorite stories of 2017/2018 and is exactly what this industry needs!  Images below were taken last October when I attended the official opening of the Touquoy mine.

Atlantic Gold owns Canada’s newest open pit gold mine, the 'Moose River Consolidated' located in Nova Scotia. They started initial production in September 2017 and had their first Gold Pour presented at their official opening in early October 2017 (Which I, @EvenPrime was lucky enough to be invited to https://ceo.ca/agb?6ffb04e85d09

Phase 1 Life of Mine production guidance for 2018 is between 82,000-90,000 oz. gold at All-In-Sustaining-Costs (AISC) between $CAD675/oz. - $735/oz. The company reached substantial completion in September 2017.

As stated in the Company's news release January 29, 2018 The Phase 2 Life of Mine Expansion will have gold production ramping up to + 200,000 ounces per annum while maintaining the company’s 'industry lowest quartile cash costs' at all-in sustaining cash cost (AISC) of CAD$692/oz. Au

The Moose River Consolidated is currently 4 deposits within proximity of one another, with the Touquoy deposit being mined first (currently).

Mine Plan

- 2018 through 2022 -> Tourquoy Mine

- 2021 through 2025 -> Fifteen Mile Stream

- 2022 through 2026 -> Beaver Dam

- 2022 through 2027 -> Cochrane Hill

- Reaching 200,000 ounces per year production in 2021 continuing 5 years

The current Phase 3 expansion drilling program which aims to increase Fifteen Mile Stream and Cochrane Hill is not completed at this time and therefore the information above excludes any results from this program. Stage development and the submission of the Environment Impact Statement for Fifteen Mile Stream and Cochrane Hill is expected H2, 2018.

My personal opinion is this company will set the standard in how a junior company brings a deposit into production. With industry renown management, a disciplined crew, and a strict timeline, they were one of the few companies to bring a project into production on time, and under budget.

[Fireweed Zinc]
$FWZ.V

Fireweed Zinc are owners of the Macmillan Pass Project which is host to the Tom and Jason sediment-hosted exhalative sulphide (“Sedex”) zinc-leadsilver deposits located approximately 200km northeast of the settlement of Ross River in Yukon Territory.

As seen on my twitter post here: https://twitter.com/EvenPrime43/status/951131234750492672

they've recently released an updated NI 43-101 Resource Estimate and boy did they deliver. They increased their deposit substantially:

Increased Indicated by 74% => 11.2Mt at 9.6ZnEq indicated.

Increased Inferred by 61% => 39.5Mt at 10% ZnEq inferred.

CEO Brandon MacDonald couldn't hide his smile with results like these (Image from VRIC Feb 2018)

1.  Significant exploration upside remains, including the potential to expand upon historic work and to utilize modern exploration methods in search of new discoveries.
   
2.  Existing camp, road access and a government airstrip are already in place
   

In order to have a feasible project in this part of the world you need size and grade.  Fireweed's deposit has the grade, the issue has always been about size. This is why I highlighted the importance of their recent Resource Estimate with the significant increases in 'indicated' as well as 'inferred.'

The 2018 drill program will focus on adding tonnes to the indicated category and step out drilling to add size along with exploration drilling using updated geophysics completed late 2017.  Expect an upcoming PEA which should be out early to mid April. They've also boosted their management with the addition of Tim Oliver as the Company’s Oversight Engineer for the PEA work. I've been following Tim's work for a few years and am delighted by this addition. He is long time CEO.ca user @Tim_Oliver and I finally met him in person at #VRIC 2018 and again at #PDAC2018.  Welcome aboard Tim!

[Adamera] 

ADZ.V

I chatted with Kieran Magee with Adamera while @SaskExpress (An avid investor) chatted with CEO, Mark Kolebaba. Kieran is a great guy and we chatted about stock markets in general. 

@SaskExpress wrote, "The first two holes at SE-01 hit low grade gold which was disappointing given they were quite intrigued by the sulfide-magnetite-silica alteration. There is a third hole that was drilled in a slightly different area of SE-01 but I think expectations are that it'll have low grade gold as well. They moved the drill up to Key West and started drilling last week (written March 6th). Key West was a past producing open pit mine. They are drilling a well defined VTEM target 300 metres away that appears to have never been tested."

[Blind Creek Resources ]
BCK.V

I had a quick chance to speak with President, Brian P. Fowler.

They were hoping to have an updated resource estimate on their Blende Property before #PDAC but informed us it wouldn't be ready for a couple weeks. That was unfortunate as I am eager to read it! The Blende property currently has a 1991 historic resource of 19.6Mt averaging 3.04% zinc, 2.80% lead, and 56g/t silver.

Since then, there has been an additional 9,290 meters drilled, and I would suspect this new resource estimate will thus be quite larger (Im speculating). Blind Creek is positioning itself to conduct an additional 5,000m infill and extensional drill program to upgrade and increase the mineral resource in 2018.

Additionally, portions of the Wind River Winter Trail used to access Blind Creek's Blende Property from Mayo are included in the proposed 65 km all-season Rau Project access tote road that was recently approved. This is a significant positive development for exploration and mining in the region.

In January of this year, they announced the intention to move forward with spinning out their Engineer Gold Mines property into a new company named, Engineer Gold Mines Ltd. A 2018 NI 43-101 technical report stated an inferred resource of 20,100oz at 60g/t.

The new company is expected to list on the venture by May, 2018.

I didn't get a chance to speak with Great Bear management but I did sneak in and snap a photo with their bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year. I'm a Solera Vat 15 year fan myself but the 12 is pretty decent :) 

Finally got to sit down and chat with Allan Barry Laboucan of Alset Minerals. He brought me a bottle of tequila for creating the program to track the #StockPickingContest. He also brought a bottle for @Stocklor, the 2017 StockPickingContest champion.

I stopped by the Red Eagle Mining 3 times and each time it was quite busy so I never did get a chance to chat with them.

We even witnessed Eric Coffin using his Tin Hat at the Metal Investors Forum just before PDAC lol.

Doug Ramshaw was filling me in about Minera Alamos and recent merger with Corex Gold, which whom he is the CEO. I am currently completing my due diligence on this company and will comment at a later time. But what has caught my attention is director Chester Millar is on board.  Co-founder/Chairman of a plethora of successful companies; Eldorado Gold, Glamis Gold, Alamos Gold etc. the list goes on.

And all good things must come to an end!

But not before enjoying a glass of Scotch and hanging out with the Copper Guy!

Post PDAC was a 7 day visit to Fort Lauderdale Florida for some R&R

And I finished everything off with a glass of scotch

PDAC Adventures 2018: The End

Please remember this is not investment advice, I am not a investment adviser. Please do your own due diligence. This was just an adventure.