Ten Years Seeking the Best Mining Investments Led Me Here

I’m Closing My Newsletter Business to Join West Red Lake Gold Mines (TSXV: WRLG)

Gwen Preston, previously The Resource Maven, now Vice President Investor Relations for West Red Lake Gold Mines

DISCLAIMER: West Red Lake Gold Mines paid Taylor Hard Money Advisors Inc US$2000 to distribute this article.

After a decade searching for the best investment opportunities in the metals and mining space, I found one I like so much that I’m closing the business I spent a decade building to take a job with this company.

The company is West Red Lake Gold Mines. The opportunity is to ride alongside as a proven team of mine builders, financiers, and geologists builds the next mid-tier Canadian gold miner, starting with the Madsen mine in gold-rich Red Lake, Ontario and supported by serially successful mining entrepreneur Frank Giustra.

I’m excited about what this company has the potential to do. And that excitement is informed by everything I learned in my newsletter business, which was all about finding the best investment opportunities in the metals and mining space. For ten years I researched stocks, met execs, toured projects, and crunched numbers to find stocks with the best chance of delivering standout returns.

Standing in the Madsen mill in July 2023, when I visited the mine as an investor and letter writer.

I led my subscribers into some very big wins. I was the first newsletter writer to buy Great Bear Resources, which went on to return 100x for my subscribers. We also enjoyed multi-baggers on a gold developer, a uranium developer-turned-producer, a copper porphyry explorer, and several gold discoveries.



But now I’m closing that business to join West Red Lake Gold Mines because I think it has clear potential.

The reasons are people, asset, and vision.

The people in West Red Lake came in two waves. The first wave was the founders: the group that saw the opportunity around the shuttered Madsen mine in Red Lake, partnered with the junior explorer with a deposit next door, negotiated a great deal to buy Madsen, and ensured the company had the funds to complete the purchase and get to work. This first wave of people had vision and guts.

The second wave are the people who joined West Red Lake to make this opportunity happen. That starts with Shane Williams, who joined West Red Lake as CEO after several decades building mines for major companies around the world. Importantly, Shane is not only an experienced and successful mine builder; he is also an ideal leader who thinks before he speaks, delegates appropriately, works incredibly hard, and inspires his team. Great leaders attract great people and Shane did just that, adding a team of finance, geology, operations, and community experts who in less than a year have already made huge strides at Madsen.



A discussion of the people at West Red Lake is incomplete without Frank Giustra. Frank saw the opportunity at Madsen immediately, dove in to get the deal done, and has supported the stock in myriad ways since. Having a backer like Frank is irreplaceable – he opens doors, brings ideas, and attracts investors.

Frank Giustra taking photos of visible gold underground at the Madsen mine in July 2023

The asset: the Madsen mine has a history. It operated from 1939 to 1976, producing over 2 million oz. gold from ore that records suggest averaged 10 g/t gold in a mine with over 50 km of underground workings. From 1999 to 2014 Claude Resources took a run at restarting the mine, backed for several years by Placer Dome. Their approach didn’t work and they sold the asset to Pure Gold.

The Pure Gold story is unfortunately familiar to many in the junior mining space. I will save the details of that story for another day. Here, suffice it to say that Pure Gold was intently focused on building the next gold mine in Canada…but to get there the group pushed too fast on not enough capital, under a debt deal that left them unable to slow down or spend more. The $350 million they spent built a mine and mill with a lot of quality and utility, but also with some errors. The errors were big enough that the new mine failed to achieve lift off and closed after only 14 months of production.

This created an opportunity. There are 1.7 million oz. of indicated gold at Madsen^[1], in and around the fully permitted underground mine. There is a brand new 800-tonne-per-day mill. There is a tailings facility, a water treatment plant, and trained mine personnel in the community of Red Lake.

Underground at the Madsen mine

The Madsen mill

From the start, West Red Lake’s plan has been to create a de-risked resource to ground a confident mine plan before restarting this operation. Fundamental to that is defining good mineralization in relatively continuous and un-mined areas close to existing mine workings that could be mined alongside high-grade feed from around the existing mine.

This is a change from the previous approach. Other weak aspects of the old Madsen plan include having two portal ramps into the mine that were not connected, not doing enough reserve definition drilling, leasing major components of the mill including the primary crusher, and using inappropriate mining methods that either diluted the ore with waste rock or left ore behind.

These problems are all anticipated to be fixable. West Red Lake is almost a year into the work needed to remedy these problems and work continues. Management’s goal is to have a prefeasibility study done by early 2025 that outlines the official mine plan…and to work on many of the mine restart projects through 2024 so that costs and timelines to production by the time of that report are reduced.

There are four reasons to restart Madsen:

1. Because it should make money even at a modest scale – that’s the power of high-grade mineralization, favourable metallurgy, and immense sunk capital (ie. the mine is already built).
2. Because it will allow WRLG to find out if Madsen can become bigger
3. To develop credibility with investors, which powers the pursuit of additional acquisitions.
4. For the people of Red Lake, a mining community that I believe deserves this mine.

Making money matters. The best way to survive as a gold company is to be able to support yourself. The best way to thrive as a gold company is to have enough money to also explore, which gives you the chance turn something small into something much bigger if the rocks agree!

This is what happened down the road at the Red Lake mine: exploration at depth from within the operating underground mine discovered the High Grade zone, which transformed the mine from a 54,000-ounce-per-year producer in 1995 to a major gold operation that produced over half a million ounces of gold in 2004.^[2]  

There is already evidence, from drill holes and old mine workings, of the potential to find more gold at Madsen. 

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The 8 Zone at the bottom of the shaft is geologically similar to the High Grade Zone that transformed the Red Lake mine down the road. Both zones are at the same depth, both comprise quartz veins in flextures at the top of the ultramafic rocks where gold dropped out when fluids were unable to permeate the harder volcanic rocks above, both are higher grade than the gold in those mafic rocks above, and both started out as zones striking 140 metres.

Then there are the drill hits into potential depth extensions at Austin and South Austin. Major gold bearing structures in Red Lake often continue to great depth, and grades can improve with depth. There are some strong hits into the Austin extensions, including 34.63 g/t gold over 4.3 metres, 29.49 g/t gold over 0.76 metres, and 14.96 g/t gold over 4.64 metres (see West Red Lake Gold figure above with drill results labeled).

Then there’s the other half of the property, which was ignored for decades because of prevailing thought that Red Lake gold only existed in the Balmer formation. The Austin zone is in the Balmer rocks but down the middle of the property Balmer butts up against the Confederation formation…and the old timers, who didn’t care which kind of rocks they mined, knew there was gold on both sides. The first mining at Madsen was actually in the Confederation rocks, tapping the No. 1 vein, and recently Great Bear Resources discovered its fantastic LP Fault deposit in the Confederation formation. A small but exciting set of data from drill holes, workings, and historic records suggest there is good potential to find more gold in the almost unexplored Confederation rocks right beside the Madsen mine.

These targets may offer potential to make Madsen bigger, or better, or both. But – and this is important – the ideal way to effectively explore deep targets is from underground, funded by cash flow. Drilling deep targets from surface is expensive, slow, and inaccurate. If you can drill from underground, holes are shorter, faster, and more likely to hit target. But opening up an old working or developing underground just for exploration is expensive…so one way to potentially alleviate this is to get into production first.

Let me restate that in short: getting Madsen back into production is a good way to explore for the ‘more’ that could be in this gold system, because effective exploration benefits from cash flow and the ability to drill targets from underground. West Red Lake’s first goal is to get into production with a realistic and sustainable mine plan. Its second goal is to take advantage of being underground to find more.

West Red Lake is a team of people who know how to build mines, finance big projects, operate assets to their maximum potential, and grow. Madsen is the company’s first project. The goal is to add other advanced projects in short order, so as to grow West Red Lake into a mid-tier Canadian gold miner.

After assessing junior mining stocks for a decade, West Red Lake stands out. I see so much potential in the company that I shut down my business to join this team. If anyone would like to hear more about that potential, Click here to provide your phone number – I’ll call you to chat.

[1] Mineral resources are estimated at a cut-off grade of 3.38 g/t Au and a gold price of US1,800/oz. Please refer to the technical report entitled “Independent NI 43-101 Technical Report and Updated Mineral Resource Estimate for the PureGold Mine, Canada”, prepared by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. and dated June 16, 2023, and amended April 24, 2024 (the “Madsen Report”). The Madsen Resource Estimate has an effective date of December 31, 2021 and excludes depletion of mining activity during the period from January 1, 2022 to the mine closure on October 24, 2022 as it has been deemed immaterial and not relevant for the purpose of the Madsen Report. A full copy of the Madsen Report is available on the Company’s website and on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.

[2] Source: Newmont Goldcorp and Kirkland Lake Gold Public Disclosure

[3] Source: West Red Lake Gold Mines corporate presentation dated 3 May, 2024 (the “Corporate Presentation”). A full copy of the Corporate Presentation is available on the Company’s website.

DISCLAIMER: West Red Lake Gold Mines paid Taylor Hard Money Advisors Inc US$2000 to distribute this article.

The technical information presented in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Will Robinson, P.Geo., Vice President of Exploration for West Red Lake Gold and the Qualified Person for exploration at the West Red Lake Project, as defined by NI 43-101 “Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects”.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this article.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain statements contained in this article may constitute "forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information generally can be identified by words such as "anticipate", "expect", "estimate", "forecast", "planned", and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events. Forward-looking information is based on current expectations of management; however, it is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information in this news release and include without limitation, statements relating to the potential of the Madsen Mine and Rowan; any untapped growth potential in the Madsen deposit or the Rowan deposit; the results of further cleanup and recovery at the Madsen Mine; the Company’s intention to establish additional drilling platforms; and the Company’s future objectives and plans. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Forward‐looking information involve numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking information. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, market volatility; the state of the financial markets for the Company’s securities; fluctuations in commodity prices; timing and results of the cleanup and recovery at the Madsen Mine; and changes in the Company’s business plans. Forward-looking information is based on a number of key expectations and assumptions, including without limitation, that the Company will continue with its stated business objectives and its ability to raise additional capital to proceed. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Additional information about risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company’s management’s discussion and analysis for the year ended November 30, 2023, and the Company’s annual information form for the year ended November 30, 2023, copies of which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.

The forward-looking information contained herein is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company. The forward-looking information is made as of the date of this article and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by applicable law.

For more information on the Company, investors should review the Company’s continuous disclosure filings that are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.