Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on Plans for Winter Drill Program at Rajapalot and Rompas Gold Projects

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is Chairman and CEO of Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you this afternoon?

Michael Hudson: I’m top of the world. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Mawson recently had a good run up on some, frankly, very spectacular surface results. It's pulled back a bit and in the midst of that, you've announced the $5 million dollar private placement, which I think is a pretty opportune time for anybody that's new to the company to get a bit familiar. I'd like to start by talking a bit about the results that we talked about a few weeks back, for people that are new to the story, and then I'd like to talk about the financing and just exactly where that's going to go.

Michael Hudson: Sure, Gerardo. This property is in Finland, gold property, bigger area, regional scale, grassroots discovery that we've made over the last few years. It continues to deliver. The results you specifically spoke about over the last few weeks were extremely high-grade surface samples in outcrop. In bedrock, we sampled up to thousands of grams of gold over a strike length combined with a number of samples were found within 750 meters. We're still working in that area, it looks like it's going to get larger and then more importantly, we will be drilling in that area.

That was a brand new, virgin discovery on this property that has already delivered Finland's best ever drill hole and we've got extremely high grades over 100 square kilometers in drilling, in multiple projects. As I've said, for the third time, it continues to deliver spectacularly.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Again, for those that are newer to the story and maybe aren't up to date as to the numbers from those samples, there was a sample of 2,375 grams per tonne gold. With many of the samples containing a lot of coarse visible gold. Can you speak a bit about the intensity of the system, Mike, because that's unique.

Michael Hudson: Yeah, it's very hard to find gold in outcrop these days, that's number one, up to grams, if you find an outcrop with grams, people get excited, let alone high grades. These extremely high grades. I think we've discussed it before but it's an indication of a very intense mineralizing system and the efficiency of the system to drop gold out of those very high grades is rare but the fact is, that every major gold discovery in the world was found with very high grades at surface. That's why we like what we see here. The grades are great, the scale of the system is impressive and its variety, in terms of the different styles of mineralization that we're seeing. So this is a big system. That's where most of, if not all, of the big systems of gold in the world have been found.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now, I'm assuming that a good portion of this $5 million dollar financing was inspired by those results, and obviously you want to make sure that the treasury has been replenished before you launch an aggressive drill campaign. Would that be accurate, Mike?

Michael Hudson: Yeah, precisely, Gerardo. We've got a big drill program planned, we've got drill rigs secured. We'd like to drill $6 million dollars, 15 kilometers of drilling between December and April, and we needed to top up the kitty before the end of the year to assure that occurs and that was the basis of going down this financing.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Do you have the details of that drilling program or are you still in the process of finalizing those with the team?

Michael Hudson: It's always a work in progress but basically, we've got dots on maps and pretty much know where we want to drill. We'll start drilling in early to mid-December, in East Rompas, which is the high-grade discovery we've just been talking about. We'll put something like 1,000 to 1,500 metres there initially to try and understand what we're dealing with. Then we'll move to the northern Rajapalot area, which is eight kilometers away and drill there. Then by mid to late January, we'll get into areas where we need frozen ground around the areas in the main Rajapalot area, which has delivered such great results over the last year with our first major drill program, which went in last winter. So we've got a variety of areas to test. Then, in Rajapalot itself, we'll be putting half our drill budget there into grid drilling out known areas with more intensity, to try and put tonnes and grade and eventually resources around the areas where we've already found a significant amount of gold.

But nevertheless, we've only tested 5% of our mineralized sequence, so we've got to keep our eyes open to determine where the best parts of the system are. A 50-50 split in that part of the world. So, quite complex answer there, but exploration is always a balance between sticking to what you know and trying to find continuity of grade and tonnes. The wonder is always what's around the corner and we're just starting to scratch the surface.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, if I was a major or a mid-tier and my reserves were being depleted, and I needed to find a project with scale, a potential company maker, I definitely would be paying attention to this drill program. I imagine you've had conversations and phone calls from potential suitors that maybe want to joint venture this project?

Michael Hudson: Well, there's always been interest, absolutely, in this project. It's got the grade, it's got the scale, it's got the jurisdiction and we're fielding inquiries all the time.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Mr. Hudson, spoken like a true scholar, I appreciate the discretion, and look forward to having you back as soon as we get more details on the drill program.

Michael Hudson: Many thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, sir.

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