Latest / Kitco MINING / Sitka Gold Says 5.1 Moz RC Gold Project Is on Majors’ Radar | Cor Coe

Transcript

Sitka Gold Says 5.1 Moz RC Gold Project Is on Majors’ Radar | Cor Coe · Kitco MINING

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Add in gold ounces in Yukon.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris, here at the 2026 Precious Metal Summit in Beaver Creek, Colorado.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Joining me now is Cor Co, CEO of Sitka Gold, which trades on the TSX V under the Ticker SIG.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Cor, welcome to Kitco.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've got um one of the sort of biggest uh sort of drilling programs underway uh in Canada at the moment, 60,000 metres uh at your RC gold project in the tombstone gold belt in Yukon in Canada.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've got deposits uh already sort of defined with ounces of blackjack, Rosgobel, and Raven.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um what's the plan for this 60,000 meters?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: What are you looking to show or prove with this uh drill program cool?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, just to back up a bit, um since 2020 we've done 60,000 meters of drilling, and that's uh produced about a 5.1 uh million ounce resource.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 1.3 million of that is is indicated, and the rest is inferred.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: So this year's 60,000 meter drill program is gonna be exactly what we've drilled since day one.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: We want to expand these deposits.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um the third deposit is actually the Iger, not the Raven.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: 30,000 of that 60,000 meters is going into the Rosskoppel, which was just uh discovered last year.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then 15,000 will go into the blackjack saddle Iger area, 10,000 into our new target, which is the Puklman contact area, and about 5,000 over at the Bear Pot.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So right now we're at about 52,000 meters of that 60,000.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we got about another maybe month.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: We got seven drills going.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh very uh exciting time for Sitka.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've only released about, I think, 38 drill holes.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: We got 117 in the lab or total, so minus that is still waiting for assays, and we got another 8,000 meters of drilling.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So very uh the objective is really expansion drilling and new targets that we could possibly generate a couple more deposits.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: With so much drilling going on with the expansion resource expansion drilling, how do you anticipate that that may change the resource profile?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've already got sort of 5.1 million ounces across all categories.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: What what sort of boost do you think uh this drilling will give to your resources?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in the past we've had about 120 meters or 120 ounces per meter to get our initial resource.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um some of these drill holes are outside of the resource, so they're they're not there.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we expect it to dramatically increase the resource and uh upgrade some of the um the category as well, some infill, but uh mostly it will be um expansion drilling and new target drilling.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Five million ounces gets you you're you're over that threshold where a project starts becoming interesting to perhaps uh developers.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So are you starting to, and with the 60,000 meters an even bigger resource at some point in the future, are you starting to think about what comes next in terms of okay, do we start putting some economics around the project?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, which specific deposits will be included in that?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're actually doing an in-house uh scoping study right now, and uh we intend to uh put out a new mineral resource estimate next first quarter of uh of 2027 and probably um be following that with a PEA not far after that.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So right now we're doing baseline studies, we're doing um you know, groundwater, uh snowpack, that kind of stuff.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's already happening, looking towards uh um uh looking at the economics of it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, that's kind of the next step there is um okay, we got enough ounces here.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: What what deposits were are gonna be uh priority?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Probably Ross cobble.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we got that first initial resource of 2.25 million ounces inferred with only around 13 to 14,000 meters of drilling, and we're putting 30,000 meters into that right now.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that is probably the primary um deposit at this time, and blackjack is running a close second there too.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think one thing that uh impresses many people is the fact that uh the company in in some ways has in a relatively short space of time has come out of nowhere, and suddenly you you've built up five million ounces, that's gonna grow, and now you're talking about PA.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You seem to have done an awful lot in a relatively short period of time.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Two years ago it was 15,000 meters of drilling, last year it was 32, and this year it's 60,000.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how fast it's ramping up, and and uh and the gold is is hanging in there good.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're really excited about the the results to date and uh this property.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, over 90% of the drill holes have visible gold in them.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: It just it just that's the way it is there, you know.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're not not surprised anymore when you get a picture of visible gold.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, um I would say that this 60,000 meters will this is an inflection point for us.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're still an explorer, but we've got to look at the development potential too of the project.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gonna be kind of a combination of both going into 2027, where we're gonna be definitely budgeting a lot of drilling, but we're gonna be also looking at the economics.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It comes to something, Cor, I think, when uh visible gold becomes routine and not exciting.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's unbelievable.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it it just truly is unbelievable.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um you get numb to it after a while because every day you're getting drill core in and you're seeing the geologists are taking pictures and sending it to me, and I'm just like, yeah, well, the the truth sermon is in the assay, but when you've got visible gold, it does give you a lot of comfort.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and we've got enough drill holes in that property now that we realize that that it's a big system.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the potential disadvantages of visible gold is people can tend to label a project or deposit as nuggety, and therefore it's gonna be difficult to develop, it'll be difficult to exploit, it'd be difficult to get the continuity.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: How are you looking to manage that and convert the visible goal in every whole narrative into we've got a meaningful development project where everything hangs together?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've actually um done studies, we've had outside independent studies done on the on the on the goal to see if we do have a negative effect, and ironically, we don't.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the it the UConn continues to generate a lot of interest.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen recently sort of Talamor uh gold there got the coffee project, they're going ahead, they've been permitted.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The the government's permitted the road that I know they're under construction for them.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Victoria Gold, that process, that sale process, I understand is supposed to be coming to a conclusion in the coming weeks.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know there was, or I've heard at least that there was some interest from some major mining companies, although it's not one of those that's the leading candidate at the moment.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've you've started to receive inbound interest.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've got five million ounces, which seems to be the sort of the threshold for the bigger guys to be interested in a deposit.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So presumably they're knocking on your door.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for sure.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, we've had majors out there, the property even during the Yukon Mining Alliance, there were three majors out there.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So so uh no, no, that's that's definitely uh putting us on the radar there having five million ounces.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So with the the resource coming early next year, the PEH shortly after that, what will be the the plan from then for the rest of 2027?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well it always is based on your results, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But we've got 11 intrusions there and we've got now deposits on three of them.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're we're optimistic that maybe we'll have deposits on uh on a couple more there this year.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: But there's still a lot of intrusions that we haven't been able to get to that we know have gold mineralization associated with them.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um ideally we would probably do another 60,000 meters of drilling while we're doing our economic studies.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, drilling obviously costs money, so maybe we can sort of touch on the the company's balance sheet and cash position.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, at the end of the year here we'll have about 7 million um unallocated cash, hard dollars, and that's after we paid off all the drill contracting and and costs.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: What else can our viewers expect to see out of sitco over the next 12 to 18 months or so?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously an increase in the mineral resource estimate from the 60,000 meters of drilling.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of drill hole results coming in up to that time, so till the middle, we're figuring the middle of January we should have everything by then.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then the PEA, um, we're our planning is that we're probably gonna start that concurrent with the mineral resource upgrade so that it's not gonna be a distant thing in the future.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: We might be able to get that out in the first half of the year.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then, of course, we're drilling because like this year we started drilling it's in February.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been drilling from February to now.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there'll be drilling again and new results coming out in in uh in the spring.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably in catalyst right there.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot there.
• 9:45
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the resource update.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, sitka gold trades on the TSX V under the ticker SIG.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Corco, thank you very much for joining me today.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Paul.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot more to come from Kiko Mining here at the 2026 Precious Metal Summit.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned and hit the subscribe button.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Paul Harris, and this is Kiko Mining.