Since September 23rd, Cartier Resources (ECR.V) has put out a news release every two weeks with good to excellent gold results from its 100,000-meter drill program at its Cadillac project in the Abitibi. I asked CEO Philippe Cloutier if the company can keep up this cadence.
“That’s the plan,” said Cloutier. “We have a whole bunch of holes to drill on different targets across 15 kilometres. Plus, we are doing the metallurgical test work, environmental baselines and no doubt updating the resources and economic assessment. A loaded pipeline for plenty of news.”
“This is not an overnight process,” said Cloutier. “It took us nearly fifteen years to finally get the ground we are drilling. We’ve engineered our luck and now we can see the finish line.”
The finish line is nothing less than a district-scale gold camp in the rich gold fields of the Abitibi. Beginning with drilling out nearly three million 43-101 compliant inferred and indicated gold ounces at the Chimo Mine and then developing a district-scale geological model.
Cartier’s Cadillac project is right next door to one of Probe Resources’ projects. Which is interesting because Probe was just acquired by Fresnillo in an all cash deal worth $780 million Canadian.
“Probe boasts ten million ounces of gold,” said Cloutier. “But it’s spread out. It was in the stretch of development where juniors don’t like to be, looking at a large CAPEX to develop. They’d need to build a mill, which would be good for Cartier..”
“If you look at this deal and the Northern Superior deal a couple of weeks ago, we’ve seen over 1 billion dollars in M&A activity in the Abitibi,” said Cloutier, “So who’s next?”.
(I could not help but notice that the purchase price of Probe values its 10 million ounces in situ at $78 Canadian or $55.5 US. Apply the same numbers to Cartier’s approximately 3 million ounces and you come up with a price of 234 million Canadian. As I write, ECR’s market cap is just touching 95 million Canadian. And there are more ounces to come.)
“Senior mining companies like to be able to say to juniors, “You have significantly derisked this project”,” said Cloutier. “Which is exactly what we are doing. We’ve just started our 100,000-meter drill program.”
“It’s an ambitious program that includes approximately 600 drill holes and targets both expanding known gold zones and testing new high-priority grassroots targets.”
Looking at Cartier’s most recent press release, the North Contact Zone continues to provide good to excellent gold intervals,
“Recent drilling results continue to clearly demonstrate the presence of a shallow and extensive mineralized system (400 m in strike length by 300 m in depth), hosting multiple stacked high-grade gold zones with significant grades, widths and continuity.
Cloutier is very pleased with these results. He is even more pleased with how cost effective the drilling has been: “Our all in costs are $110 per meter,” said Cloutier. “Including planning, preparation, drilling, preparing the core and the lab work: we were able to negotiate excellent contracts early in the season when there was not much work around because we planned a large program and already had the money to fund it.”
“We’ll drill right through the winter,” said Cloutier. “In fact, some of our most exciting targets are in swampy, muddy areas which are much easier to drill when they are frozen. Less environmental impact.”
With a steady stream of news, a pending MRE, Cloutier is ready to up his marketing game. “We have a new website,” said Cloutier. “Tomorrow I am off to Frankfurt to a large German investment conference where I will be speaking. I’ll also be at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference at the end of January.”
“The program at Cadillac will be producing results through 2026,” said Cloutier. “We have the great advantage that we are very close to infrastructure. There’s a trained workforce in and around Val D’Or. Right now, we are comfortable managing a 100,000-meter program but if we could work out the funding I would be happy to extend that program to 200,000, even 250,000 meters and increase to 6 rigs turning.”
″ This is a transformational phase for Cartier and the Cadillac Project ″, commented Philippe Cloutier, President and CEO. ″ And we’re committed to making it positive transformative for our shareholders. ″
For investors, ECR at $0.21 with gold closing in on $4200 is a compelling case. Once the Abitibi M&A train got on the rails, projects with proven gold ounces and a program to add to those ounces become more and more attractive.
Cloutier is committed to adding as much value as possible before that train arrives at the Cadillac station.