This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Trojan Gold. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
“All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.” – Robin Sloan.
Trojan Gold (CSE:TGII) is an Ontario-based prospect generator junior exploration company led by a team with expertise spanning the entire mining spectrum, from exploration to engineering, project financing, and permitting experience.
Listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, the company has accumulated sizeable land positions in the Hemlo Gold Camp, Beardmore-Geraldton Gold Camp, and Shebandowan Greenstone Belt, representing significant mineral exploration potential.
Trojan Gold’s philosophy is based on the belief that maximising value is based on strategic property acquisitions and that requires in-depth research into targeted exploration opportunities. Specifically, management is focused on identifying exploration opportunities where potential has been underexploited due to poor market conditions and lack of management interest.
As a result, the company has identified property previously overlooked and discounted, situated in the “world-class” Hemlo Gold Mining Camp just 350km east of Thunder Bay in Ontario and within 1.2km of Barrick Gold’s longstanding Williams Mine. An exploration opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Trojan has also identified and secured similar, “high-potential” properties in the nascent Shebandowan Gold Camp (home to Goldshore Resources’ (TSX-V:GSHR) Moss Lake property), as well as the historical Beardmore-Geraldton Gold Camp. And this is not to mention the company’s massive opportunity in the Dominican Republic – a project in development for the past 10 years.
Trojan, a dark horse
As Trojan CEO Charles J Elbourne explains to Mining.com.au, the company is embarking on a mission to educate the market on its portfolio, which includes a 50% joint venture interest in the 7,919-acre Hemlo South property with Tashota Resources (a related company). Trojan also holds a 100% interest in the 12,050-acre Watershed property, located 100km west ofThunder Bay is situated in the Shebandowan Greenstone Belt, adjacent to Goldshore’s Moss Lake property.
“I did a call test one time and learned – now this was quite a few years back – I had a thousand businesspeople called up in Toronto and mentioned Hemlo. Most had never heard of it – 90% never heard of it. And 23 million ounces came out of there. But they never heard of it,” Elbourne tells this news service.
“Probably 60 or 70% knew the name Barrick Gold though. They knew that. But what it told me was ordinary people on the street, when it comes to junior mining, we (Trojan Gold) are not at that stage where everybody’s hanging around the water-cooler talking about what we’re doing.”
Trojan Gold is very much a dark horse in the junior gold exploration space.
The Trojan Horse is a legendary wooden horse used by the Greeks to infiltrate the city of Troy during the Trojan War. The Trojans, believing it to be an offering of the gods, brought the horse into their city. Then under the cover of night, Greek soldiers hidden inside sprung out to open the city’s gates to enable a surprise attack, leading to the destruction of Troy.
Obviously, no nefarious surprises are being planned. Rather the company, which is backed by Elbourne’s investment firm, Interbanc Capital, is mapping out a roadmap to unlock the treasures it firmly believes are held within its investment portfolio.
“We want to go into the Hemlo Gold Camp, Beardmore-Geraldton Gold camp and Shebandowan Greenstone Belt to start producing and generate some cash flow. We’re going to do more drilling, drilling, and even more drilling,” he continues.
The immediate focus for cash flow is the Wascana Shaft on the Beardmore property, with an 8,000-ton surface rockpile, with an estimated 800-1,000 ounces of gold potential. Again – hiding right in plain sight.
Interbanc Capital has investments in Trojan Gold, Tashota Resources, and Strike Copper. Strike Copper is another junior mineral exploration company currently focused on defining and monetising the resource potential of its Sungold property in the Shebandowan Greenstone Belt in Northwestern Ontario. Together, these three companies have substantial property holdings in the Hemlo Gold Camp, the Shebandowan Greenstone Belt, and the Beardmore-Geraldton Gold Camp in Northern Ontario.
In 2021, Crescat Capital came on board as a strategic investor. Elbourne says Crescat’s investment in Trojan validates management’s philosophy of acquiring the right properties in the right jurisdictions at the right time – particularly its focus on the Hemlo Gold Camp.
At the time, Kevin Smith, Crescat’s founder and Chief Investment Officer, said “Trojan has an outstanding management and advisory team that has accumulated an impressive set of properties”.
“This type of opportunity fits our friendly activist investment approach very well, and we look forward to working with the company to develop and implement its current exploration programs,” Smith said.
Crescat Capital has also made substantial investments in Strike Copper and Tashota Resources.
Four years later, Elbourne says the catalyst to get out of the gates is creating investor awareness of the “talented and highly experienced people” that Trojan Gold employs all working within a disciplined structure to capitalise on its historical property resources. In other words, to stop hiding in plain sight.
Galloping ahead: Right property, right people, right structure
In the short term, the company is accessing historical data and implementing modern mining techniques and technology to capitalise on the Hemlo Gold Mining Camp in Ontario, just a short gallop from Barrick Gold’s (NYSE: GOLD) Hemlo operation. Barrick has been drilling 1,100m from Tashota’s Hemlo West property along two known shear zones.
Hemlo North is situated just north of Barrick’s Hemlo property, its Black River claims are adjacent to Hemlo West, and the Cirrus Lake claims are northwest of Barrick’s mines. The total acreage held by Tashota and Trojan in the Hemlo Gold Camp exceeds 39,000 acres and practically surrounds Barrick’s Hemlo operations.
Barrick’s Hemlo property (located just north of Lake Superior on the Trans-Canada Highway, about 35km east of Marathon, Ontario) has produced over 21 million ounces of gold and has been operating continuously for over 30 years.
Currently only operating underground, it is projected to produce some 140,000 to 160,000 ounces of gold in 2025 from its proven and probable gold reserves of 1.6 million ounces, measured and indicated gold resources of 3.4 million ounces, and inferred gold resources of 620,000 ounces.
While Elbourne admits his understanding of geology is not as proficient as his knowledge of the investment and finance side of things, he is well aware of the benefits of the notion of ‘closeology’ (also known as nearology) with Barrick and Goldshore.
“In mining, it’s hard to tell if you’re between a rock and a hard place. So my job, primarily, is to actualise our philosophy on mineral exploration”
“In mining, it’s hard to tell if you’re between a rock and a hard place. So my job, primarily, is to actualise our philosophy on mineral exploration. First, you have to have the right property; second, the right people; and third, the right capital structure,” the CEO explains to Mining.com.au.
“And some people come back and say, ‘No, no, Chuck, people are number one’. I say, ‘No, the property is number one. But then, when you get the right people, make sure the people you get know that property’. They must have a history of it, right?
“So when you go back to Beardmore, there was 43-101 (National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report) done on it in one area, the Paulpic Zone, and it had a pretty good history, but typically, when the market goes up, you do work, when the market goes down, you walk from the properties.
“What I do is I look around for properties that have excellent potential. Properties that somebody walked away from because they either ran out of money or the market crashed or whatever. So you have to do your own digging, and on that particular property.”
In Beardmore, Tashota in 2013 went in and drilled 26 holes in the Paulpic Zone where 68 holes had previously been drilled and came up with an NI 43-101 resource of 260,000 tons grading at 0.241 (68,900 ounces), “which is pretty darn good”, the CEO adds.
However, Elbourne says Trojan’s immediate target, further south on the property, is the Wascana Shaft. At Wascana, the deposit of surface rock grading 8,000 tons at 0.12 grams per ton (about 1,100 ounces); with nine drillholes less than 100 feet in depth each and all showed visible gold. This included drillhole (W13-02), which contains 8.226g/t gold over 8.70m, including 3.90m averaging 15.675g/t gold, including 1.35m averaging 31.283g/t, including 0.45m of 55.346g/t.
Right people in the saddle
Trojan Gold has the right people in the saddle to emerge out of plain sight.
President and CEO Charles Elbourne has over 45 years’ experience in the investment industry, including 25 years’ involvement in mining. He has considerable expertise in identifying exploration properties and negotiating acquisitions; assembling management teams, including geological and mining experts. Elbourne has also completed many industry related courses including the Canadian Securities Course, the NYSE Securities Examination and the New York Institute of Finance (Securities Analysis Course).
Director and Advisor Rodney Barber is a senior geologist with extensive experience in exploration and production. He was most recently employed as the Geology Superintendent for Barrick’s Williams Mine at Hemlo, a position he reached after joining the company in 2001 as a Mine Geologist and rising through the ranks to Chief Geologist in 2008.
COO Sarah Morrison has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. She currently serves as Founder and President of Uplisting Advisory Services Inc. Morrison currently serves as Corporate Secretary to a number of Canadian reporting issuers and is a McMaster University alumni.
Similarly, CFO Jon Li has more than 20 years of finance experience, with specialisation in mining, technology, and the financial service industry. As the Vice President of WD Numeric, a full-service accounting firm that provides financial and support services for both public and private companies, Li leads ongoing process improvement efforts, conducts quality control reviews of client files, and provides CFO services to a portfolio of clients.
Jason Bagg, Independent Director, brings over 20 years of financial, technology and mining industry experience, and is currently President and CEO of Puranium Energy and President of Urano Energy.
Advisor and geologist Dr Colin Bowdidge has worked in mineral exploration for 34 years, primarily in Canada but including projects in the US, South America, and Europe.
After working for major mining companies for five years, he became a consulting geologist, which has been his principal occupation since 1974. Bowdidge’s experience covers exploration and development projects for a wide variety of mineral commodities. He has been involved in the development of several mines, including the Pinebay copper mine in Manitoba, the Thierry nickel-copper mine in northwest Ontario, the Cerro Mojon gold mine in Nicaragua, and the San Andres gold mine in Honduras.
Advisor Russell Kwiatkowski has been an avid and successful gold prospector and mineral exploration property optionor in Thunder Bay, Ontario, for the past 45 years. Starting as an assistant geophysicist at Coldstream Mine (100km west of Thunder Bay, Ontario), Russell worked with the Ontario Department of Mines and Northern Affairs’ fieldwork teams.
Advisor Ikram Osmani has 35 years of experience in field-based mineral exploration for a variety of mineral commodities in diverse geological settings. He has five years of corporate experience, including responsibilities as president and vice president of publicly traded junior resource companies.
New approach: Taking the reins
This team has been instrumental in positioning Trojan Gold, Tashota Resources, and Strike Copper to capitalise on their inherent resources, including unlocking the value of the Beardmore-Geraldton Gold Camp property in Northwestern Ontario.
This historical property includes the Paulpic (or Adair) gold deposit, which contains a NI43-101-compliant inferred mineral resource of 68,900 ounces of gold in 260,000 tonnes, with an average gold grade of 8.24 grams per tonne. This is the most substantial mineral deposit known to date on the property.
It also includes the Wascana Shaft, the subject of underground development between 1917 and 1937. Subsequent work performed in 2013-2014 included 10 diamond drillholes near the shaft, which produced nine holes with visible gold. An example of work performed in 2013-2014, the average for drillhole W13-02 was 8.226 g/t gold over 8.70m, including 3.90m averaging 15.675g/t, 1.35m averaging 31.283g/t, and 0.45m of 55.346g/t gold.
The shaft is 300 feet deep (91.5m) and filled with water. The top 100 feet host a historically estimated 7,000oz of gold. At the Wascana mine site, waste rock from underground mine development in the 1930s was piled beside and north of the Wascana shaft.
The Wascana stockpile comprises mixed quartz and greenstone. It has been estimated to contain some 8,937 tons of broken rock with an average grade of about 0.124 ounces per ton, or potentially more than 1,100oz altogether.
“When they dug that shaft back then, they only went down 100 feet. But they were getting excellent numbers. But here’s how they messed up a little bit. They started going laterally to the north when they got down 90 to 100 feet. They were following the shear with all the gold showings. They were getting an ounce and two ounces and all kinds,” Elbourne tells Mining.com.au.
“You can imagine, 1930, and you’re holding a lantern or some damn thing, and you’re picking away, and you keep prying it away, and then you don’t see visible gold. They all went for the visible gold, right? When they don’t see any more visible gold, they might go on an extra few feet and then start to the left or right and keep trying to find the next visible gold.
“So in 2013, we drilled around the rock pile because what they did was odd. They were going laterally north, 100 feet down, finding good gold numbers. They were bringing the rock up and piling it on top at the north, piling it where they were headed to.”
Moving the stockpile and dropping it further to where they were heading was obviously not sensible or productive. It meant moving it again once they got there, no small feat considering the Wascana stockpile has been estimated to contain 8,000 tons of broken rock, based on a differential GPS survey.
The average of 44 randomly selected samples of material from the stockpile (with high assays capped at 20g/t gold) was 4.01g/t (reported by Peter Bevan in 2010). These samples were taken from the stockpile’s surface and should not be considered representative of the entire stockpile.
“The geologists today estimate, based on our drilling and historical data, that the numbers that come out of the Wascana Shaft suggest that there may be another 7,000, maybe 8,000 ounces within another 100 feet or so,” Trojan’s CEO adds.
“And we need to drill down to where they extended the shaft in 1934 to the 300-foot level. Again, it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s 30 million bucks Canadian in today’s money if we find 8,000 ounces.”
As Trojan Gold emerges from hiding in plain sight, one begins to ponder whether the company is already out of the gate. It “definitely would be” if Tashota is backed into Trojan Gold, Elbourne adds.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au & Trojan
