Yes, Virginia, There Is Mining Here

Source: Peter Epstein for Streetwise Reports   06/21/2019

Peter Epstein of Epstein Research explores prospects in Virginia and Canada in this interview with the company’s CEO.

I’ve been watching this company for nearly two years. There have been ups and downs, a lot of excitement and some disappointments, but the management team at Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. (BAY:TSX.V; ATBHF:OTCQB) is superb—no one can argue that fact.

And, the market for natural resource stocks has been awful. Anyone disagree? In looking across several sectors—battery, precious and base metals—I would say that Aston Bay’s shares are in the bottom quartile of performance over the past year. Nothing to brag about, but it could certainly be worse.

As a single-asset play in a high-cost exploration jurisdiction (Nunavut, Canada), this was (and still is) a highly speculative investment opportunity. However, Aston Bay is now a two project company, and its second project is in the much cheaper to operate and faster-moving location of Virginia in the U.S.). In Virginia, one of the company’s primary targets is gold, which just so happens to be performing extremely well. As I write this, gold is up over US$100 per ounce (US$100/oz) in June alone, and touched US$1,395/oz (a 15-month high) earlier this morning (June 20). Yet, Aston’s market cap is just CA$6.5 million (CA$6.5M = US$5M). Now could be a good time to take a closer look at the company.

This interview is more focused on the newer asset in the U.S., a property that’s in the process of being greatly expanded and had very recent high-grade drill results. The team wants to educate the market about this exciting project. However, CEO Thomas Ullrich remains quite bullish on Nunavut, he just needs to stretch his exploration dollars and spend wisely. Deep drilling is simply not an option (too expensive) unless Aston finds a partner. But if other metals follow the gold price higher, finding a partner could become a lot easier.

Without further preamble, here is my exclusive interview with Thomas Ullrich, a man with over 20 years’ experience in mineral exploration and geoscience, CEO and a director of Aston Bay.

Peter Epstein: In looking at your new June corporate presentation, I see near-surface hits of 56m @3.06% copper (Cu), 110m @2.45% Cu in Nunavut. . .What could possibly be wrong?

Thomas Ullrich: There’s nothing wrong with that! These hits are a clear indication of a very robust copper mineralizing system at our Storm Copper project in Nunavut. The system is equally robust for zinc, as can be seen in the 1 million tonne Inferred resource of over 10% zinc at our Seal Zinc project to the west. We have two locations where mineralization pokes through to surface, over top of over 2,000 meters of flat-lying sedimentary rock beds.

The thesis here is that metal-bearing fluids moving through faults can potentially deposit very significant amounts of copper and zinc in permeable sedimentary layers. The combination of a robust mineralizing system and a thick package of rock with permeable layers increases our confidence that a significant deposit might have been formed. However, since the rocks are flat-lying, most of the potentially mineralized layers are hidden. The only way to find them is to drill.

But drilling is expensive, so smart targeting is critical. Geophysics can help “see” into the subsurface to improve the odds, but it’s not simple. We have some large gravity anomalies that may correspond to metal deposition in areas predicted by our geological model. That combination of a robust ore-forming system, predictive geological model and supporting geophysical anomalies is very compelling.

( Companies Mentioned: BAY:TSX.V; ATBHF:OTCQB, )