Wallace, Idaho–
There
is nothing quite so restorative to the soul as a
return to Val d'Or, Quebec,
which next only to the SilverValley is the greatest hard-rock mining district in
all of North America. And the only thing
more restorative than a return visit to Val d'Or is running in to a couple of
mining guys who made promises to us a year ago that they've not only kept,
but kept ahead of schedule even while amping up the
action.
So we're bent
over a serious plate of locally-grown caviar and sturgeon from nearby
Sturgeon Falls at the Hotel Forestel – whence
may be obtained the finest groceries and wine and accommodations in all of
the Quebec Friveria and at McDonald's prices across
the street from this giant open-pit mine of Cygna's
– with Metanor Resources' president Serge Roy and Metanor's sparkplug development adviser, long-time
partner and mine-builder Ghislain
“Jesse” Morin, who are grinning like Cheshire cats. They're
months ahead of the objectives they'd put before themselves a year ago, when
we first visited their BachelorLake gold mine two hours north of Val d'Or in the lovely little burgh of Desmaraisville. Quite to the surprise of even people
who've known Serge and Jessy all their lives, much
more to the surprise of a Wallace skeptic like yours truly, Metanor will be in serious gold production by mid-summer
2007, not the entirely rational forecast of late 2007 they'd anticipated one
year ago.
Mid-summer 2007.
Why, that's aa few months
from now. In the context of what is normally accepted in mining terms as
“near-term,” mid-summer this year is damn near yesterday. The 600
t.p.d. BachelorLake's ball mill will
turn its first revolutions in May while Roy and Morin and their crew shake
down the mothballed concentrator, and by late June they'll be pouring dore bars at the start-up rate of 20,000 ounces of Au
per year. Not bad, not bad indeed.
Promises
notwithstanding, what we liked about Metanor a year
ago in our original 11th July 2006 rant, “Mad
About Metanor”, we still like: here is a
company with a fully-diluted market cap of $15-20 million that owns a fully
functional 600 tpd mill with a depreciated value of
$27 million and a replacement value of $60 million, sitting out in the middle
of a section of the Cadillac Fault with no competitors within 200 km, in a proven
gold-rich district of underground and opencast mines, and with itself a gold
resource in excess of 2 million ounces.
What
jump-started Metanor's schedule was its purchase of
100% of the Barry gold deposit 65
km southeast of the BachelorLake
mine and mill. The 500,000-ton, 60,000-ounce open-pit gold deposit is located
in the Urban-Barry greenstone belt and, lacking much in the way of
overburden, gives Metanor instant access to ore for
their mill. Primary crushing will be done on-site, with secondary crushing
and refining at the BachelorLake facility. The
Barry property boasts an ore-to-waste ratio of a mere 1:1, meaning half of
every bucket load they scoop up will be ore.
“Production
from the Barry property will give us immediate cash flow to further develop
the huge underground potential at BachelorLake,” Morin told
us. Metanor acquired the property for a mere C$450k cash, 416,700 shares and a 4.5% NSR.
Late last week, Metanor advanced its mop-up of gold properties contiguous
to BachelorLake by acquiring another 63 adjacent
claims covering 2,787
hectares. The mining claims purchased cover the rock
horizon which hosts the Coniagas Mine which produced,
until 1967, more than 700,000 tonnes of ore
averaging 10.7% Zn, 1.0% Pb and 5.3 oz/t Ag.
Details of the transaction may be read on MTO's
website here.
The upside and
the downside of Metanor is that absolutely nobody
knows about them and, at C$0.68, they are priced accordingly. (Well, nobody
outside of the Abitibi mining district of northwestern Quebec, that is. It's salutary that a goodly share of MTO's shares are
held by local residents who have faith in Roy and Morin and in fellow
director and Val d'Or
denizen Yves Gagnon. Directors and institutions hold more than 50% of the
stock, so there ain't much float.) But that
“nobody knows about 'em” part is about
to change. Roy told us that this year, with
their land position now in place and the mill ready to fire up, MTO's principals will be out on the stump, in Europe and
in North America, hitting the gold shows and
spreading the word.
So the table is
set and the meal is cooked. Only now, then, will the sign out front of that
little mill in Desmaraisville,
Quebec, advertise that they're
open for business. Which, in our way of thinking, is the
right order of doing things. MTO has rock in the box. Watch 'em rock.
Information contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be
reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. It is not intended to constitute
individual investment advice and is not designed to meet your personal
financial situation. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author
and are subject to change without notice. The information herein may become
outdated and there is no obligation to update any such information. The
author, 24hGold, entities in which they have an interest, family and
associates may from time to time have positions in the securities or
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