Managing Director of Pacgold Limited (ASX:PGO) Tony Schreck discusses the company's key asset the Alice River Gold Project.
Abbey Phillipps: We're talking today with Pacgold, ASX Code PGO. The company has a market cap of around $19 million. Pacgold is a gold exploration company focused on progressing its key asset; The Alice River Gold Project in North Queensland. This project comprises a portfolio of eight mining leases and five exploration permits in an area that has been historically under-explored providing Pacgold, the enviable position of being the first mover in an overlooked prospective gold terrain. Welcome PGO Managing director Tony Schreck. Tony, thanks for joining us.
Tony Schreck: Lovely. No, thank you very much. Abbey.
Abbey Phillipps: The Pacgold story is a relatively fresh one with your IPO completed just over two years ago on the flagship Alice River Gold Project. What achievements has Pacgold made during this time?
Tony Schreck: Oh, thanks, Abbey. Yeah, well, Pacgold, we're a relatively fresh story, but for Pacgold, we recognize the Alice River Gold Project as an overlooked historical gold field. The work we've done has highlighted that it's part of a much, much larger gold system that's never been recognised, and particularly it's never really had modern exploration as well. The last 30 years has seen almost no exploration completed. So for us coming in here, we've come in here with new ideas, new technology, and we've had amazing success in the very first drill program, in fact.
So right out the gate from our IPO, we intersected drill results such as 17m at 9.3g gold. And they're incredible numbers, but it's really highlighted that we're onto a much, much larger gold system that's never been recognised. The work we're doing now, just in the last few programs is we're stepping out now a long strike from this initial discovery zone and we're replicating it a long strike. And even as recent as yesterday, we put out a new release on a whole new project that's a long strike and it reinforces that we're onto a 30km-long trend that we're having some amazing success on.
Abbey Phillipps: Tony, can you tell us the history of the Alice River Gold Project over the past 30 years?
Tony Schreck: Yeah, well, I mean the project even dates well before that, and it goes back to the 1890s; it was historically discovered and it was because there was outcropping gold and that's where the historical prospectors back in the 1800s focused. But even modern exploration going back to the 1980s, that exploration focused just on the outcropping areas as well. There was historical mining back in the 90s and they pulled out of an open pit about 30,000 ounces at five and a half grams gold. So, the last mining to have occurred there was in the late 90s, and there really hasn't been any modern exploration completed since those times.
But part of the opportunity for us is that the past explorers focused on the outcropping areas, but the vast majority of the target that we've outlined over 30km is all under shallow sand cover. And so that's been completely overlooked by the past exploration, but we've got some of the modern exploration tools such as IP geophysics, and that works tremendously well for us and we can see right through the cover. And that's how we've been able to define the new target that we're focusing on over 30km.
Abbey Phillipps: So Pacgold has impressive institutional representation on the share register. What is the attraction of these institutions to Pacgold?
Tony Schreck: We're pretty proud of our institutional register. There's actually 22 per cent of the register are made up of really high quality institutional investors, the likes of RCF, Acorn, Lowell, and Altor. And a lot of those guys have been there from the absolute beginning with Pacgold. And what they see is a big scale potential project. They see multiple kilometres of scale. And that's what we've been able to demonstrate right from the onset of the IPO, that we've been able to sort of reinforce that and demonstrate it. So those guys are in here for that big story, the big picture, and that's what we're really clearly painting that picture at the moment.
Abbey Phillipps: So Tony, what is the status of the current drilling program and what are the plans going forward?
Tony Schreck: We're planning to restart the drilling in the coming weeks, and that program will continue right through to the end of the year. And we're pretty excited! Some of the targets we're going to be drill testing are some targets that we've really just recognised out of the latest geophysical work. So we'll be embarking on those. The strategy behind that is to really highlight the sort of scales. We're testing new targets that have never been recognized before and they've never been drill tested before. So based on the success that we've had in the last two years, we're quite confident and quite excited to start sort of stepping out and testing new targets.
Abbey Phillipps: And finally, what news flow can investors expect in the coming months?
Tony Schreck: With the drill program commencing, there'll be news flow of results coming over the course of the next month and right through to the end of the year and even into early next year. But we completed also an IP geophysical survey and quite an extensive regional sampling program, and those results will be coming out in the coming weeks, in fact. So, we've got quite a continuous flow of news flow to come over the coming weeks and months.
Abbey Phillipps: Tony, thanks for joining us today. All the best for the future.
Tony Schreck: Lovely. Thank you very much, Abbey.
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