Noricum Gold (LON:NMG) Managing Director Greg Kuenzel caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their acquisition of a Georgian mining company
Q1: You recently released some news which we can only describe as transformational for the company, can you tell us about the project?
A1: We think it’s an absolutely incredible project. We have acquired 50% of a Georgian company that hold 861 square kilometres of exploration ground in Georgia although I should point out that the licence is a 30 year exploration and mining licence. It has had a lot of historical work undertaken on it, it has a significant amount of Soviet-era drilling which has resulted in the resource that was disclosed in the announcement. This overall, the entire project, has approximately 980,000 tonne copper resource, 6.5 million ounces of gold and 22 million ounces of silver. We will be focussing on three priority targets within that licence and the resource on those three targets is what’s noted further down in the announcement; 450,000 tonnes of cooper, 830,000 ounces of gold and 20 million ounces of silver and pretty decent amount of lead, zinc and barite at very good grades.
Q2: So what will be the immediate plans for Noricum?
A2: Our immediate focus is going to be looking at converting what we think is a sizable chunk of that non-JORC resource into JORC. As I said, there has been quite a lot of drilling undertaken historically and there’s also been a lot of additional exploration work done over the last couple of years. We think we can convert a sizable portion of that to JORC by remodelling data and also twinning some of the existing drill holes. The second focus is going to be on expanding that resource and we’re also going to be looking at new term production potential as well.
Q3: Now you’ve mentioned that there is an existing infrastructure there, how will this benefit Noricum, will you be able to exploit this?
A3: Yes, our partner in Georgia has an existing operating copper-gold mine, the Madneuli mine, which is quite a sizable open pit and has been in operation for many years now. They recently build a new processing plant which has excess capacity so we have already had discussions as to the ability to use that plant for toll treatment. There’s generally very good infrastructure in the area, our licences surround the existing operating mines so we have access to a lot of those facilities, we have access to the infrastructure, we have access to our local partners’ people as we require, they also built an assay lab recently so we have access to that as well. So there’s a lot of infrastructure already in place so for a company in our position, where we have a very high grade resource, moving to that next step in production, we have the potential to cut out a lot of the development phase by utilising that existing infrastructure.
Q4: So how does this fit in with Austria?
A4: It sits alongside Austria and we, at this stage, will continue our work in Austria. Obviously the size of the resource and the potential in Georgia from a scale prospective dwarfs the targets we have in Austria, however we see them sitting together quite nicely. We’re continuing our work at Walchen, we’re expecting the initial result imminently on the mapping and sampling and we’ll continue to look, as we have said we are, for partners and still continuing to progress the Schonberg asset. So we see these sitting together quite nicely.
Q5: So good news on all fronts then? Now we also saw the announcement of the new director, Martyn Churchouse, what will Martyn be doing for Noricum?
A5: Martyn has joined us as an executive director. He has a wealth of knowledge, he’s worked as an exploration geologist for 30 plus years. He has a lot of knowledge on these assets, he has been working as a senior consultant to Lundin Mining for the last couple of years and it was through that connection that he’s been working on these Georgian assets and it’s how we became involved in these. So we look forward to welcoming Martyn into the team, to bolstering the team and for him working with us in really taking these assets forward. I guess it’s important to point out as well, we had an initial target and these are predominantly these VMS structures but we have an 860 square kilometres of exploration ground here which includes some very very additional exciting targets. There’s a lot there, we should have a lot of news flow over the coming months, we have existing cash resources in which to commence our work so we’re just very excited about getting started and keeping the market up to date with news.
