Notes from GGPHelp Interview with Artemis Resources Q3 2022 Update - 21 Oct 2022

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Notes from GGPHelp Interview with Artemis Resources Q3 2022 Update - 21 Oct 2022


Interview:
https://youtu.be/oQO3YpEL54M

RNS:
https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/LSE_new ... 580032.pdf

Created from a software transcript export

GGP Sections Highlighted

Liam
Hello and welcome to this Artemis Resources Webcast. My name is Liam and I'm the host of today's show. I'm pleased to present another interview for you and joining me as always is executive director Alastair Clayton. Welcome to the show, Alastair.

Alastair
G’day Liam. Thanks for having us.

Liam
Not a problem at all if you don't know much about the company. Artemis Resources Ltd is a gold and copper focused resources company with major assets in the West Pilbara, including the Radio Hill plant and the 100% owned Paterson Central and the world class Paterson range in the Eastern Pilbara. They are committed to the discovery of multi-million ounce gold and copper resources.

Liam
Another quarter has flown past for us Alastair. What have you been up to since we last spoke?

Alastair
Well, lots. Thanks, Liam. I'm pleased to report today hopefully some of your listeners would have seen our recent Carlow Castle MRE, which, frankly, I think we're all pretty proud of. I certainly have had some very nice messages from industry and mining industry and investment industry in terms of the numbers. It's only it's only a waypoint on our way, hopefully to bigger, better things at that project.

But yeah, we were really pleased with the numbers Liam and certainly in these rising cost times to have a sort of 2.5 head grade is pretty darn good. So yeah, very pleased with that. And obviously we'll cover in a bit more detail in the interview. But yeah, we've obviously been happily drilling way out in the Paterson's, been out there a couple of times myself of late and yeah watch this space but yeah lots going on.

Liam
Fantastic, I see that you're not in your usual office. Where are you today?

Alastair
Not at all. Working from home from London today. Liam, unfortunately, I’ve got the dreaded lergy not covid, but to start making sure that that pass to anyone else other than the dog.

Liam
Oh bless you. And let's talk about your great Carlow project, because you are, and rightly so, extremely excited about it. On the 13th of October, you announced an inferred mineral resource of 704,000 ounces of gold equivalent at 2.5 grams per tonne from 8.74 million tonnes of ore, I believe. Just how good is that Greater Carlow project?

Alastair
Look, you know, just stepping back a bit and I think we may have spoken in this last time we spoke, what we wanted to do with the Carlow resource was and we always thought it was capable of delivering. This was to take the existing non mineralized envelope and effectively crunch it, make it a higher-grade deposit and that obviously means it excluding some tons and ounces and focusing on sort of quality, quality, quality.

That's what we said we're going to do. And absolutely thrilled that was delivered, as I said, to get to put it in context for some of your listeners, you know, we all want to get to the million ounce equivalent and beyond. And that's certainly something that we've spoken about for some time. But as costs rise in the industry, we're seeing inflation throughout all industries.

There's one thing that offers you the best cushion against rising cost across the board and that's grade. What we said to our team was that’s fine, we haven't changed our medium term goal of a million ounce plus. But guess what? It's got to be done at two and a half and above. And I hope shareholders and potential shareholders can take a bit of solace in that, that rather grab for the lower grade resource, we’ve gone for a higher quality subset of that and we've put that out there as the basis for the project going forward.

It's not what we think. Down there, it's open in all directions, especially at depth and at crosscut. Carlisle North, the others areas we’ve spoken about, but we wanted to put a peg in the sand of where we think the project is going and what it could be and yeah, we're pretty happy with that. And as I say to people, you know, two and a half gram equivalent head grade, it was Show Me Better, it's 83% of that coming from Open Pit.

That's something great to crack on with and we hope we'll put some real…a very line marker in the sand for Artemis going forward.

Liam
Absolutely. And with that open pit, Do I… I don't wish to make an assumption, but just for those that might be new to the sector and industry, the open pit is going to be the first or the easier to get to, isn't it, as opposed to going for an underground mine.

Alastair
Sure. Look, you know, and look, look, there are different levers and cost levers associated with open pit versus underground, etc. and there are multi you know, there are a number of dimensions in play… their cost inputs. But in a very simplistic way, you know, starting from an open pit perspective, bearing in mind there's no real overburden where we are mineralization is basically from surface.

It basically means your capital outlay effectively to get to ore or your first money is potentially a lot lower. Okay. So that's always attractive as a general rule and it allows for establishment of a of a large-scale mining operation pretty quickly rather than having to build a decline or shaft and then create drives and those sort of things to bring tonnage in, you can pretty much access it as you're paying for yourself to cut.

But that's the basic theory behind what we're doing.

Liam
I mean, it's a really good project. I noted between not only your announcement but also broker note released today that given the location of the project and the fact that you have your own processor mill, it's really not that far down the road. It it's the whole project is just in a fantastic location isn't it.

Alastair
Yeah. Stepping back for a sec, I mean in terms of sort of Carlow, what we've always said we do own the Radio Hill plant down the road, and that was something we inherited when we took the company over. And what a great asset to go. I think probably what we've proven since we've put in this release out is that Carlow will be probably so big that it will require its own standalone processing plant where it is, Radio Hills is only about 30 kilometres away.

But that's but that's actually fantastic because again, it's everything flows through to capital and OpEx. Carlow, I jokingly told brokers and people that come on site visits is the best located project in in Australia. Why do I say that. Well, you know if you got a hankering for a Big Mac, you can in half an hour you can buy a Big Mac drive through in Karratha and while that might seem like a banal story, the point is that it all impacts on our capital.

So, a gold mine in Western Australia can also often, not always but can often be…. it's effectively a stand-alone village or town. So that requires an airport airstrip, accommodation village, whatever, iron out catering facilities, water trade plant, all those sort of destinations you expect if you're looking after a couple of hundred people. Right. Well, the great thing about the location of Carlow is we're nine kilometres from the town of Roeburn and 22 kilometres from town, the city of Karratha, which is colloquially known as the capital of the Pilbara.

Okay, so all those capital items don't have to go in. Those capital items don't need to be operated. So that could potentially flow through to our picks. But look, we're just an inferred resource stage and I'm just making the broad brush statements that are blindingly obvious that not having to build all these things is only going to save you money.

Okay. And just talking about the MRE, I think there's something else I'd really like to highlight to your listeners, because I think it could probably help them in evaluating or thinking about this project or other projects for other companies. You know, we've had about 12 months pretty strong cost inflation throughout the sector. The resource we've put out today, and I'm not allowed to talk about the economics because that would be contravening the rules.

But just to give you a bit of a flavour, there's a there is an economic the way that JORC resources are calculated today, there has to be an economic consideration. Is it likely or viable that it can be economically exploited? I think that's a very good thing. Otherwise, people could produce resources talking about 0.1 gram gold and all sorts of nonsense.

But the point and what should give you're… hopefully people looking at our project this resource was put out on Monday, what you have has captured all the large part of cost inflation so that it's a resource… is an economic iterative economic calculation. And what we've got is something is up to date that's factoring, taking into consideration a lot of the cost things we're seeing across the sector, which if you think about it, Liam makes it even better because what it says to you is if inflation moderates over the next 2 to 4 years, well, fantastic.

You're probably going to get some of that back. But at the moment, it's already super robust at current inflated prices. So, I think the I think I think, you know, in terms of the sort of the whole sort of package of where the projects going, I think they should be hugely attractive to invest.

Liam
In the future is certainly bright, is that all for your drilling program now or do you think there's a lot more to learn from the ore body?

Alastair
Oh, look, there's there is a lot and if you go through the resource RNS that you can see on our website. I mean you can see that the deposits are opening in multiple directions, both at depth and along strike and terms of cross-cut, etc. We're looking to kick off some more work. You know, we'll been running into Christmas season.

Unfortunately, that's the reality of life. Christmas comes around early and before you know it, it's Easter. But the reality is we already know we've already publicly stated where we expect to be drilling and where one can take the project forward. Give the example of Carlow North. I think we've already told shareholders that we were going to…

We have completed a heritage survey over that area and that areas is could be prepared to be drilled. But yeah, the project is still very much in the how big is it, we now identified the baseline of what's the core is already there and now it's a question of what more can be there and the really good thing is and and I've spoken to a lot of shareholders over the last year and a bit as we've been putting constantly putting out really good drill results and some element of frustration.

Oh, why isn’t the share price going up? And look, I'm not really allowed to comment on individual, you know, those sorts of things, but I'll just put out point that up to Monday, all of our brilliant results have been going out slightly lacking in context. That's great, fantastic numbers. What does it mean? Where's it going? Well, now we've got that resource.

And don't forget, this is just a resource today, it will grow. It will grow and grow and grow again. But the next time we’re drilling and putting out great results, shareholders should be able to see and make their own inferences of how that's adding to the resource. So hopefully we're learning we've finally put some context back into it. But as general guidance still very much in the how big is it stage.

Liam
Fantastic I noted in the report that you chose to have the data verified by the independent company Snowden Optiro, how important is it that money is spent on things like this at this stage?

Alastair
Oh, absolutely. And look, again, Snowden is top firm. That's part of the resource process is actually generated by those by those independent companies and very well respected companies. And that obviously gives shareholders, you know, a huge amount of understanding and sort of in terms of things being done to extremely rigorous standard. We're very lucky one of our directors, Dr. Sun Domini, sits on one of the JORC committees and was very much involved in assisting with data transference and working with Snowden's on this resource.

At that level, experience can't be underestimated. You know, we've published within our resource statement, you'll see the assumptions or the basic bedrock assumptions towards the back of the RNS. Have a look at them. Have a look at the base assumptions there they are all not pie in the sky. They are robust. And that's all about putting together something that really can withstand anyone trying to pick it apart.

So look, we're really confident that a really high level of scrutiny was put into the resource. It wasn't done just to grab, quote unquote, the biggest number. It was done to generate what we really think there on a grade basis and then to drive the project forward.

Liam
I'm really excited to find out how that pans out. You have announced that you have detected broad, shallow zones of copper and nickel at Chapman. The results there are really, really encouraging what's going to happen next that.

Alastair
Yeah, look that's it's probably for no other reason than we've had so much fun with the Carlow resource that's probably just sort of dropped back in a bit in people's minds just to sort of refresh people minds Chapman is a is a is a really interesting zone. It's only a couple of only about a kilometre south of Carlow.

Okay. We came in, we drilled a couple of holes at the end of ‘21 and we got some fantastic actually copper gold results. Believe it or not, I think it was ten meters at 3-3.5% copper or something like that. Copper, grams, gold. And that was really wild catting stuff that was like just, you know, no one had ever really drilled much there before and we hit something but came in and just did some really broad space drilling.

What I mean broad space, I mean several hundred meters apart per hole, just with a couple of drill holes. And look what we intersected, I suppose, poses a lot of questions and we're certainly not claiming this as a discovery yet. But what we what we just intersectd was a large what we call an ultramafic body, which talks about the iron magnesium content of the rocks where you typically find what we call magmatic nickel copper deposits.

And to give you an example, there's a a very attractive nickel copper deposit only a few kilometres away owned by another company to the east of us called Azure. That's putting together a fantastic nickel resource there. Look we're really encouraged by those. We certainly need to refine our work to come in on the higher grade stuff, but you know, combined nickel and if you put the nickel and copper together they weren't that we while we consider them all great potential yet they certainly suggest that you're in that system.

It's about 850 meters to a kilometre long. Like I said, had very scant drilling on it already. And that's something we're going to come back to. But like I said, our focus really has been unashamedly on Carlow. We need to deliver that for shareholders and like I said, I'm absolutely stoked that we have delivered it.

Liam
We're going to move on now to the Paterson Central. We're you’re next door to one of the biggest finds in a generation. Things are hotting up further in the Paterson both with the temperature and what is being found with the drill bit. How is your own current drilling campaign going?

Alastair
Look really well. I was up there not long ago myself. I think people have followed Twitter. I have seen some of my nice pictures from site, look really well. We've been tracking away with single drill rig since gosh, since June-July. And we've been putting holes in primarily around the Apollo area pretty much as planned, certainly. Look, it's always nice to just look, you know, a little way over and there are someone else's drill rigs just to the south of you and I'll let you draw those inferences.

That's not really my place. I'm just focused on what we're doing. But look, our team's done a terrific job, as you know. Will, probably. Where are we? We're not we're getting towards mid to late October. We'll be finishing up in November, something like that. Be a bit before. It just depends on when we finish our drill holes. The good news for everyone, and you may have heard this from other companies is the labs are turning around quicker.

I'm going to plant a bit of wood to touch. Does it change in a hurry? But we are seeing quicker turnaround, markedly quicker turnaround of labs. We're seeing a lot less exploration, call on exploration teams. I think that's possibly due to ramping up of capacity and probably due to more scarce availability of capital across the journey sector.

But we can get rigs and people and those sort of things that people like me have been bleating on about for the last two years.. are certainly falling much more back towards what we call the bounds of normal, but yet we're happily drilling away there. And as I said, it's until you really go out there and stand there and see what's going on at Havieron and what's going on in our ground.

It's quite hard to just sort of look at an aerial satellite view or aerial map or something like that to really gain an understanding of the palpable sort of electricity that's going on there with the discovery and what it does to people and how it makes them feel. And like I said, we were hosted there and very grateful for that.

And we've been, like I said, with we've already got drill core in at the labs. So, people are very confident. We had to wait a hell of a long-time last year, you know, to the point of people like me just getting tired of making quote unquote excuses. But at the end of the day, you know, lab times blew out three or four months, which is just untenable in terms of being able to not just run our own programs, but keep people informed as they should be.

But like I said, already got drill holes in there. So, speaking to our GM not an hour ago, he's just tucking in for dinner up there and yeah, look, let's just let's just wait and see. We did say we'd be updating shareholders as we went along. I do expect to be updating shareholders in the next couple of weeks as and then yeah, on we go.

But obviously, yes, it is getting hot up there. Luckily it was only low thirties for now. About 39 now and of course the corporate temperatures, recently Liam with the eponymous Andrew Forrest taking a big stake, you know, in our next door neighbour.

Liam
Absolutely. I have a question about that coming up later on. If if I may stop later on. Well, I have had, though, is a question from one of our viewers, and they've written in and asked. One could speculate using satellite data that the drill teams from Newcrest and Artemis could throw things at each other due to the fact they're so close.

What would happen and obviously this is absolute speculation. If you if it is to be proven that both companies were drilling the same ore body.

Alastair
I'll just let you know. The funny thing is, life imitating art. I was involved in… I wasn't involved in the discovery, but I was a geologist, just post discovery and a company called Eagle Mining and the next door neighbour, we actually share the same gold deposit, which I believe is just part of 12 million ounce.

And we literally had a little batter (barrier) down the middle of one of the pits. We were mining one site they were mining the other side, they eventually bought us of course, that asset's called Jundee which is one of the bigger gold mines in Western Australia. But yeah, I've always said golds got a sense of humour, tends to put mineral deposits on tenement boundaries or the like, look the simple, the simple thing is these are not uncommon and common sense always prevails.

There is always I you know one thing people think that miners are all big, rough and tough. And look, sometimes they are big rough tough but it's it's over and above that. It's a highly professional and collegiate industry. People tend to work together, create value where there is, because of course, with no development, there's no value.

And and and those situations are not uncommon. And what what…. well 99% of the time common sense is the prevailing force of the universe and an arrangement, whatever that could be is come to. Would we ever throw anything to them. Absolutely not. Lovely people.

Liam
But I do mean that….

Alastair
That we're more like we're more likely to try borrow a tin opener that someone forgot to pack or something like that. That's, that's probably the, that's probably the highlight of any interaction that would that would happen.

Liam
Okay. I've nearly put into my notes about a, a fight with one of those big guns, kids run around with, with the big orange bullets shooting at each other. But I didn't think that was necessarily appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you've got you've already kind of alluded to this, so I don't expect to touch on it very much.

But I just wanted to ask, do you expect outstanding cores to be back from the lab to your teams before Christmas? Obviously, we need still need time to analyse and collate that. And I think you were the first to start your drilling campaign for this season. So, everyone's going to be looking to use for A/ that turnaround time and B/ because we're all excited to see what's hiding underneath that cover up there at the Paterson.

Alastair
So absolute. Yeah, look, absolutely. I think I did drop into GGP’s camp at Black Hills, actually lovely bunch fellas said good day… yeah look as I said turnaround times pretty good, we have regular trucks going out to Port Hedland and Karratha. Drove myself a few times.. All right. It's good. Lovely 8 and half, nine hour drive. But yeah, the core then goes pretty rapidly to our Radio Hill facility where the team cut it, log it and shoot it off down to the labs toot sweet.

You can pay for rush gold we call it so you rushed for the gold analysis and the multi element i.e. copper it's everything else usually tags along behind it but yeah look I don't think there's any problem in saying guidance that things are orders of magnitude faster than they were last year. And yeah, I don't think we're going to be waiting for…we I think we should have some or all of our results pre-Christmas. That is that is certainly my expectation an absolute.

Liam
Going to I love the fact that you say the lovely eight and a half nine-hour drive where here in the United Kingdom and eight and a half to nine hour drive you can drive from London to Edinburgh, which is not the whole way out the country, but it's a damn good part of it just shows you how big it all is.

Alastair
It nearly took me that just to get to Northampton the other weekend. Stay off the M1 viewers. Yeah. I looked like I said we got the teams are pretty committed and you know it's it is hard slog but if it was easy everyone would be doing.

Liam
Moving back to Radio Hill now the processing plant is currently underway with a refurbishment with gold and copper prices starting to show signs of being on the move again. When do you anticipate starting production yet?

Alastair
Look, Liam Radio Hill. It's a funny one, isn't it? You know, it's the question I get asked a lot. Look, Radio Hill was a nickel copper plant back in the nineties. A previous management did some refurb and added a gravity gold circuit. Look, we haven't done any further work on that. I don't expect to in the near term, to be honest with you, because we were always waiting to see how big Carlow was and how big Carlow can be.

I think we've answered that question and have answered with a definitive standalone plant at Carlow. That's no bad thing. That means the economies of scale and building are scaling up, you know, Radio Hill was only circa 400, 425,000 tonnes per annum to give viewers an general idea, you know, a million ounce gold deposit, if you had to give a very broad brush stroke would generally entail a million tonne per annum plant plus just to give you an idea of scaling and of course, mining's all about scale and about economies of scale.

So look, I think we're pretty much definitively answer that question that Carlow, is something that when developed, will be its own beast. And we're hopeful that through the exploration drill bit, through it, you know, we can make the requirement just bigger and bigger and bigger because that's a mark of the success of making that resource bigger. So where does that leave Radio Hill ?

Look, it's a really strategic asset, okay? There's a lot of copper, nickel and copper proponents in the area. We have some assets ourselves. Everyone can see the value in it. It's not ready to turn on. In terms of production, I've had some independent, uh, relatively recent engineering work done on that by some people we know just and, and it's what we thought is there is a tailings facility there.

The front-end crushing circuit looks pretty viable in terms of the ball mills and those sort of things. But the back end of the plant, which is really where you create the concentrates, what with all the flotation, I think that needs to be completely rebuilt. It's 1990’s technology anyway. You want to move forward with the new processing, you know, optimized flotation circuits, new environmentally friendly chemicals and all those sorts of things.

I mean, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't want to use a late nineties mobile phone. We would not want to use those mid 90’s flotation plants. So, you would build something new there in terms of directionally, what does that mean for Radio Hill? Well, first of all, it's our base and it's you know, we have a good carrying value on that asset.

We're talking lots of people are very interested because what the region needs around there is someone to unlock the potential of those nickel deposits because at the moment there's nothing built or nothing quite of scale that's kind of going to get there. So again, a by clearly about the collaborative approach often in mining and I think that's something you might see and I could see Radio Hill playing a very central role in that because again, over and above the sort of kit and everything that's there, it's the in terms of permitting, you know, it's permitted for a lot of what we're talking about, not all of it.

That all has an impact on time, value of money, you know, months of permitting and environmental work. So, look, there's great deal of value to be had at Radio Hill. I think they've been inextricably linked to the fate of Carlow. I think what we've demonstrated this week is that Carlowr is big enough and ugly enough to be its own beast.

What were they going to do with Radio Hill? Well, like I said, we're talking to lots of people about that. There's a hopefully a collaborative approach that can they can put that put some capital back in to get that asset ready to process some theoretical ore and then start bringing in ore from all these sort of projects and create a real sort of hub and spoke approach.

But that's watch the space. But like I said, we've been again, we've been so focused on Carlow and drilling in the Paterson is.. we haven't you know when we have something to talk shareholders about we'll unveil those plans as and when.

Liam
Fantastic and so the question on everybody's lips that everyone probably really want to get your opinion on. In recent weeks, your neighbours in the Paterson Central GGP have seen considerable investment from new partners, one of which is a billionaire who goes by the name of Andrew Forrest via one of his investment companies (Wyloo Metals). Do you think he's done now or do you think he's got bigger plans in the desert?

Alastair
Sure, I'll have to disclose that. I worked for Andrew for five years.

Liam
Did you? I didn't dig deep enough for that.

Alastair
Yeah. So anyway, look again, in the caveat that I sit and I'm not putting words in his or anyone else's mouth, but I had a great time working for him and to say the man thinks big might be the understatement of the universe. Andrew sees over the horizon and beyond of what most people are capable of, and more importantly, can execute it.

But look all that aside, and I haven't spoken to any of the proponents for talking about just to be clear, other than sending my best to Shaun saying what a great deal. Well, I mean that. What a great deal. Andrew is a shareholder. He not only has the pockets deep enough to whichever of whatever vision he has for the Paterson’s on a gold and copper basis, he has the tenacity to help execute.

And I think Shaun with Elizabeth Gaines, Mark Barnaba joining the board, I mean I fail to see what more you could really want. What does it mean for little old Artemis? Look, we're just doing what we always said we were going to do. We're just away exploring. Is it great to have two people interested in a region rather than just one?

Yeah, I. Of course, it is. You know, that's just a that's just a general observation, Liam. But yeah, I think it's a fantastic deal. The Paterson's requires graft and money and it requires people that are prepared to take a view and a long view to put something together. I think we can all I'm sure you, your shareholders, your listeners, GGP shareholders, Artemis shareholders, we can all see where that's going.

And in terms of sort of building a bespoke approach for both gold and copper in the Paterson’s. Well, you know, for all its challenges, you know, again, show me a better region to be trying to put together into something that could not only one of the world's great gold districts, but one of the world's great copper producing districts as well.

So yeah, really interesting. I like yourself, was probably a product of cheering on from the side-lines. And yeah, roll on 2023.

Liam
Absolutely. And Alastair Clayton, executive director of Artemis Resources, thank you for joining me. Do you have anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

Alastair
No, no other than look, hey Liam thanks for your time. And yeah, like I said, we look forward to just keep delivering news and watch this space.

Liam
Absolutely. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of this webcast, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us with the Twitter address. It's on the screen now. We hope you enjoyed it and we hope to speak to you again soon. Alastair, thank you. I'll hopefully catch up with you maybe just before Christmas, maybe just after, depending on how quarters, a new season and life goes. So, if I don't see you before, I appreciate I am the first person to say this, have a great Christmas.

Alastair
So, I'm not even thinking about that just yet. But look, like I said Liam always appreciate the time to chat. Much appreciated.

Liam
Thank you. My name's Liam and you've been watching an Artemis Resources webcast, until next time I bid you g’day.

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