Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with GoldArc Resources (ASX:GA8), Managing Director Paul Stephen
Lel Smits: Gold Arc Resources is rapidly consolidating its position across Western Australia’s prolific Leonora and Kukaini districts, with drilling extending gold anomalies and high-grade results continuing to emerge across its portfolio. Ahead of presenting at Sydney Mining Club, I’m joined by Gold Arc Resources Managing Director Paul Stephen to discuss the company’s growing Leonora South Hub, recent exploration success at Leonora North and Mount Stirling Well, and how its mining partnership model could help turn discoveries into production and fund further exploration. Paul, welcome to the Stock Network.
Paul Stephen: Thank you, nice to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, Gold Arc is consolidating a growing land position across the Leonora South corridor, including the recent addition of the Kukaini Gold Project. How important is this larger position to the company’s strategy and also its pathway towards production?
Paul Stephen: Look, it’s a really interesting question because we’re not just acquiring new ground, we’re also divesting ground that we’ve looked at and don’t consider to be prospective for Gold.
You know, in a previous era with previous management and a different name of Asra Minerals, the company was focused on rare earths and Lithium and wasn’t really looking at its Gold assets correctly. We’ve come along with a new team and really focused in on Gold only. So particularly in our southern package, one of the challenges for mining companies is there’s always been disjointed ownership, as in there’s always been too many small companies owning little pieces of ground that don’t really put together a continuous package.
So our recent purchase of the Regenerate package is really key because it effectively fills in the jigsaw puzzle and allows us to have deposits that breach tenement boundaries and we can consolidate that and put it all together for the first time in probably 15 or 20 years.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And with high grade results continuing at Mount Sterling Well and new Gold trends emerging at Yttria and Whistler, how is Gold Ark prioritising its exploration pipeline and also how could its toll milling and mining partnership model accelerate cash flow and further growth?
Paul Stephen: So there’s sort of two questions there. So the first one is we’re in Leonora and Leonora is famous for its very, very high grades. I mean, we’re hitting drill intersections up to 900 grams a tonne, really broad intersections from surface. So, you know, intersections like 18 metres, 6 grams, but from a metre, almost from surface.
So one of our challenges is to make sure we prioritise our targeting and our drilling. We’ve done 75,000 metres of drilling this year already, which is a huge program for a small company. We’ve just commenced another 6,600.
This program we’re doing now is really exciting because it’s drilling into new targets. A lot of the work we’ve been doing to date has been taking areas where there was known to be Gold and improving them. This program is one where we’re actually chasing new targets.
And, you know, I keep saying this is the program where you want to be a Gold Ark shareholder because we make a discovery now and I’ll lead into the mining partnerships. We make a discovery now, it will be too late to buy Gold Ark shares because they’ll be up a long way on the back of that. Now, doing the toll milling and the partnership with BML particularly is a way to really fast track cash flow.
And our aim is to get into a position where we’re not coming back to shareholders for more money. So we’re not doing continuously diluted raises. And by partnering with a company that brings capital to the table, it means they’re funding the mining portion.
So we become very much the focused explorer and our job is to generate new ounces. In partnering with them, we don’t need to go through that process of financing and building a mining team that’s already in place. And Mount Sterling deposit is one of the few deposits in Western Australia that is now absolutely shovel ready.
You know, we have all our permits in place, we have most of our camp built, you know, we’re in the final stages of negotiating, you know, with mills for toll milling contracts. And once we get those contracts in place, you know, we can be mining literally within days. So it’s a very exciting time to be the Gold Ark shareholder.
Lel Smits: Well, thank you for the update on Gold Ark and look forward to hearing more at Sydney Mining Club.
Paul Stephen: Yeah, it’s going to be great to be there.
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