David D’Onofrio, CEO of White Gold Corp (V.WGO), says the company offers the opportunities and has the successes of multiple mining juniors, all combined into one company. “It’s not about one project or one resource, but about continually advancing our pipeline of multiple exploration projects efficiently and effectively in an exciting new gold camp.” states D’Onofrio.
White Gold owns the largest land package in the prolific White Gold District of Yukon, the site of the original Gold Rush that produced over 20 million ounces of placer gold and multimillion-ounce hard rock discoveries in recent years acquired by majors for hundreds of millions of dollars. The first thing D’Onofrio tells investors about the company is their strategy to working their significant land position of over one million acres. “From the very inception of White Gold Corp, our model has been to explore and advance our assets as a pipeline, project by project,” said D’Onofrio. “We work our land package, generate discoveries, and look to eventually vend out projects once we advanced them to a sufficient level.”
To identify and advance its prospective gold targets the company’s exploration strategy is spearheaded by world famous gold prospector Shawn Ryan and his proprietary “Drones to Drills” strategy. This systematic exploration method combines geophysics, extensive soil sampling and other techniques, with cutting-edge technologies such as LiDAR, airborne mag-radiometric surveying and the unique GT Probe, a replacement for trenching that samples bedrock quickly and with minimal environmental impact. This allows White Gold to build an extremely detailed picture of a particular area, identifying the most attractive drill targets, quickly and cost-effectively.
“We know the most valuable gold ounces are near an established resource. Right now, we have an NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate of over 1,500,000 gold ounces at our flagship Golden Saddle & Arc deposits, and our VG 230,000 gold ounce resource 10km away.” Said D’Onofrio. “We are focusing on the area within 5 kilometers of these deposits. We see nearby targets as being part of a single, large project and those are where we believe the ‘easy’ and ‘high value’ ounces are to be found. We also have other great projects. This is just on of our main focus areas.”
In its September 25 press release White Gold provided an update on this season’s drilling activities across the White Gold property. This included the Golden Saddle deposit, the Ryan’s Surprise discovery located two kilometers to the west, as well as drilling and positive metallurgical results from its Arc deposit. Some of the highlights from this season’s drilling on the Golden Saddle include hole WHTGS19D0198 returning 3.59 g/t Au over 68.0m from 73m depth, including 8.11 g/t Au over 13.6m from 77m depth, and 2.31 g/t Au over 10.56m at 179m depth. Hole WHTGS19D0212 had returned 4.85 g/t Au over 27.5m from 38m depth, including 6.58 g/t Au over 9.0m from 51m depth.
This season’s diamond drilling results on the Ryan’s Surprise were very strong, expanding on last year’s preliminary RC drill holes, which had included holes WHTRYN18RC001 with 6.09m of 20.64 g/t Au from 84m depth, and WHTRYN18RC002 with 13.17m of 5.02 g/t Au from 122m depth, including 4.57m of 9.25 g/t Au at 123m depth. With the diamond drilling this season significant mineralization was encountered, demonstrating the presence of multiple gold zones in addition to those previously modelled. Highlights included hole WHTRS19D012 which intersected two zones of gold mineralization – 2.66 g/t Au over 11.00m from 93m depth, and 2.10 g/t Au over 31.78m from 142m depth, including 4.23 g/t Au over 3.06m.
At the Arc deposit, diamond drilling produced some of the best grades to date, and significantly extended mineralization almost 23%, 300m to the east to a length of 1,300m. “In conjunction with our strategic partner Agnico Eagle, we completed an analysis of the Arc’s metallurgy,” stated D’Onofrio, “The results were very positive, indicating a recovery over 85%.” The tests demonstrated Arc’s gold was not refractory mineralization, a strong positive for future ore production.
The combined positive results this season on the Golden Saddle, Arc and Ryan’s Surprise, are moving the needle on their White Gold property, closer towards what majors look for in a potential development project.
“There are multiple other targets we’ve identified and have done preliminary work on, near our Golden Saddle & Arc resources,” said D’Onofrio. “But with so many prospective areas on our list, we have to prioritize.”
North-East from the White Gold property is the JP Ross property. “At the Vertigo discovery, we have seen ultra-high gold results from 30 to 100+ grams per ton starting at surface. We’re diamond drilling right now, with results to be released soon.”
However, sometimes a property is attractive enough that it warrants immediate attention. “Less than 15km west of our Vertigo discovery, on the Hen property, we have our newest target getting everyone excited: the Titan. One soil sample from the Titan returned over 100,000 ppb gold. With a good soil sample being 400 ppb this was the highest we’ve ever seen; definitely something that grabs our attention.” Said D’Onofrio, “We also detected a large donut-shaped magnetic low, and some other interesting features, so we absolutely had it fast-tracked. There will be some RAB holes drilled before this season end. In fact, Shawn Ryan himself was on site doing further sampling a couple of days ago.”
“We have done a tremendous amount of work this year which is ongoing and are looking forward to receive the results in the coming weeks and months.”
“Alongside the Titan, we’ve also identified several other new high-priority targets for next year. These are all additional examples of our approach of building a pipeline of projects.” Stated D’Onofrio, “We start with basic activities like soil sampling, and as we get results, we put more gas in the engine.”
“We specialize in our strengths,” said D’Onofrio. “We explore, generate the discoveries, get them to the right level, and let the majors take it from there to build the mines.”
Exactly how that will work will depend on the offer.” said D’Onofrio. “We want to optimize shareholder value.”
“We have a lot of great things going on in our company, and sometimes it’s a challenge to ensure the market appreciates all of this. At Beaver Creek,” said D’Onofrio referring to the recently held Precious Metals Summit Conference, “I sit down with an investor for thirty minutes, and then they get it, they understand that our portfolio includes at least three project groups that could each be their own standalone company.”
“Beaver Creek was phenomenal,” said D’Onofrio. “The overall sentiment was great and we saw a significant rise in the volume of White Gold shares being traded as people got an understanding of our story.”
Having multiple projects brings steady news flow from White Gold into the New Year. It also ensures White Gold has a parade of advancing projects to pitch to senior and mid-tier companies.
With over a million acres of prospective land in Yukon, D’Onofrio was very confident, “Every year we find new highly prospective targets, and bring advanced assets closer to that finish line for a major.” With the backing of both Agnico Eagle and Kinross each with 19% equity in White Gold, we have the benefit of working closely with proven mine builders to advance this district that has had so much recent success and is still very underexplored.
More information at the White Gold Website