Premier Gold Mines Limited (TSX: PG) Diversifies Gold Projects throughout North America with Aggressive 2014 Drilling Schedule
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By Allen Alper.
on 1/24/2014
Ewan Downie, President & CEO of Premier Gold Mines Limited (TSX: PG), took a few moments out of his busy schedule at the Metals and Mining Show to speak with Metals News about the current state of the company and the aggressive plans for drilling in 2014.
Said Downie, “Premier Gold Mines is a company with multi-million ounce resources in three projects.” This diversification will help the company to decrease the level of risk over the long term. Downie said, “We aren’t going to live and die on one project.” The projects themselves are all located within mining-friendly North America. Downie said, “We have three key projects located in some of North America’s top mining camps.”
The projects held by the company include some partnerships with some of the most well-known mining companies in the world. Said Downie, “We are a partner with Goldcorp at their Red Lake Gold Mine and we are in the Battle Mountain Trend working on a property that is under lease from Newmont. Red Lake and Battle Mountain are the main trends where you’d want to go looking for gold, in North America.” Already existing infrastructure also benefits Premier Gold Mines’ long term plans. Said Downie, “Our main projects have road access and a power line. As I said, we are entirely North American focused, which is, in my opinion, the best place to be building mines. It has the lowest political risk anywhere.”
Financially, the company is in a solid state. Said Downie, “Currently we are sitting on $75 to $80 million dollars in cash and cash equivalents in the bank. We are one of the few companies that has a huge treasury.” This financial backing has given Premier Gold Mines options in this challenging market. Downie said, “That has allowed us to pursue new opportunities, not just have to sit back and say ‘How am I going to survive?’ and make it through the year. We are in great shape for the next several years as a company that has very active exploration and mining projects ahead of us going in several places.”
In fact, the company will be spending tens of millions of dollars on an aggressive drilling program that is designed to advance their projects in a significant way. Downie said, “In 2014, our company will be spending almost $30 million dollars in exploration development, so one of the biggest years in company history. The largest project we are advancing is Hardrock.” This particular project features millions of ounces of gold in the ground. Said Downie, “We have millions of ounces in open pit resources and we are moving Hardrock toward potential development.” Part of that process is to determine if the project is economically feasible. Downie said, “We are doing a preliminary economic assessment that will be announced in the first quarter of next year and we will be putting out a final resource at the end of our current 140,000 meter drill program. We are hoping to upgrade resources so that almost all are upgraded to the Indicated category. Hardrock also has a significant underground component.”
The Company has other drill programs in operation at this time. Said Downie, “In Nevada, we have an active drill program going that is expected to continue throughout 2014. We just started drilling new targets on this large property package that is immediately adjacent to Newmont’s Phoenix mine and, in our first two targets, we made two new discoveries.” Downie believes that these new discoveries have not been factored in by the market. Said Downie, “This discovery has been largely overlooked by the market so far, but I think by this time next year it is going to be one of the core projects in Nevada. It is an exciting new discovery.”
Premier Gold Mines is also working on the Red Lake Project. Said Downie, “Lastly, in Red Lake, we have just started drilling our primary “Wilmar” target from underground. It is adjacent to Goldcorp’s new mine that is under development and can be explored from the new underground mine development that they have spent the last two years constructing that crosses our joint venture property. It is an exciting time for all three projects.”
Like every company, Premier Gold Mines faces challenges in the markets. Said Downie, “I think our biggest challenge is the gold price and the market sentiment, even though we are somewhat immune at this time to current market sentiment because we don’t need to raise money.” Downie believes so heavily in the company that he is financially invested in the company. Said Downie, “I am a fairly major shareholder and bought more shares this morning. I’d really like to see the market turn so we can see mining share prices go up instead of seeing this continuing languishing market.” For the company, Downie believes that the challenges are not as much with the share price as with the gold prices. Downie said, “Gold price is probably the biggest and the only challenge in our way right now.”
Downie leads Premier with a great deal of experience in the mining sector. He said, “As President and CEO, I founded Wolfden in the late 1990’s. Premier was a spin out of Wolfden in 2006, so our shareholders at that time got Premier shares for free. In 2007, Wolfden was taken over by Zinifex for $360 million and essentially the same group (board of directors) continues to run Premier. Premier has the original Red Lake gold assets out of the Wolfden portfolio and our VP-Project and Corporate Development is the former chief geologist from Goldcorp who led the discovery of the High Grade Zone at the Red Lake Mine. With other additions since its inception, we have built one of mining industry’s premier management teams.” All in all, Downie is optimistic about the future. He said, “I’m looking forward to a really exciting 2014. Hopefully, we will see a bottom here and we hope that investors will come into the mining sector. It should be onwards and upwards from here.”
http://www.premiergoldmines.com/
Premier
Gold Mines Limited
HEAD OFFICE
Suite 200, 1100 Russell Street
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Canada P7B 5N2
Phone: (807) 346-1390
Fax: (807) 346-1381
Toll Free: (888) 346-1390
Email: info@premiergoldmines.com
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