Moneta Porcupine on threshold of production

It’s the oldest continuously traded stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange and it’s ready to make some noise. Moneta Porcupine Mines is the oldest mining company in Timmins. They started exploration as a publicly traded company in 1910 and produced 150,000 ounces of gold from 1938 to 1943 in the heart of Timmins.

By Kevin Vincent, Mining Life
Chief Geologist Kevin Montgomery outlined the company’s exciting plans to delegates at the recent Mining the Abitibi Virtual Conference hosted by Canadian Trade-Ex.  
“It has been a busy start of the year for Moneta. In February 2021, the company completed the acquisition of the Garrison Project from O3-Mining, to create a leading Canadian development company with four million ounces of gold in the indicated category, and 4.4 million ounces in the inferred category,” said Montgomery.
That makes Moneta one of the largest undeveloped ore resources in North America. It consists of both open pit and higher grade underground resources. The company has 2.8 million in the underground resource and 5.6 million in the open pit resource.
“The new project is a combination of the Golden Highway project of Moneta and the previous Garrison project of O3 Mining and it is now being called the Tower Gold project,” explained Montgomery.  
“We’re about 100 kilometers to the east of Timmins in the Matheson area. We’re in an excellent gold producing camp. We have great infrastructure, Highway 101 East runs just to the north of us. We’re also located on the prolific Destor Porcupine Fault Zone where all the major mines of the Timmins camp are located. In fact, we have 17 kilometers of strike length along the Destor Porcupine Fault Zone.”
The company is well positioned with a significant resource base and they have an established mining camp. “We’re one of the largest land holders in the Timmins camp now. And we have excellent potential to expand our resources. We have 555 million shares out. This has been ranging from $0.11-$0.47. We’re currently sitting around $0.38. But more importantly we have no debt and we have a cash position of about $25 million in the kitty.”
Moneta’s management and directors have a successful track record in exploring, developing, and producing. The management team is led by CEO Gary O’Connor who has been leading the team for over three years now. “We have a new CFO, Jason Macintosh, he’s just joined the company about six months ago. Our directors have been involved with a number of companies O3 Mining, Osisko, Barrick, and Kinross. So we have the experience to develop.”
The benefit of project consolidation with O3 Mining is that Moneta is now one of the largest undeveloped gold mining projects in Ontario. “We have a much larger scale project than originally envisioned in our recent PEA studies which will bring significant economic benefits on the operational and development synergies. We’re also located in the Timmins district where there are many large mining projects that are permitted. Our land position has also increased by 73%, so we have more land to find more resources.”
Moneta also has a starter pit at Garrison which outcrops the gold mineralization. There’s no pre-stripping or anything else required to activate that starter. “This will aid with our underground and open pit resources on the Golden Highway Project,” added Montgomery.

Garrison Pit aiming towards a production profile of over 200,000 ounces per annum

Moneta has over eight gold deposits now in the combined property. The majority of the open pit resources are on the Garrison Project. Moneta also has significant resources at Windjammer South. “We have about 3.3 million ounces in the indicated and open pit and we have an underground resource focused predominantly on the southwest deposit where we have two million ounces in both indicated and inferred, which are very good numbers.”
“We have a company that’s creating value with significant indicated resources. We have a good starter pit at Garrison. We’re aiming towards a production profile of over 200,000 ounces per annum. We have a lot of exploration potential which we are focusing on this year. Metallurgy, the ore from both the projects are compatible to conventional process field sheets. So it’s looking really good.”
The company’s 2021 drill program is going to be 70,000 meters of which they’ve completed about 35,000 meters. “We’ve been focusing on the 55 infield and pit expansion. We’re trying to expand the resources at Westaway. And we’re also trying to connect the eastern part of southwest towards the Windjammer South pit in this area. We do also have some targets that we’re following up on the halfway resource area and we will be looking at the Garrison Garcon east pit expansion and Garrison underground in the future, in the next couple months.”
At the Windjammer South open pit, the company intercepted some interesting gold values - 75 meters of 0.95 grams per ton. “We’re hoping to push this out. We have more drilling going on there and trying to push out the Windjammer South towards the east. We’re also looking at expanding the Windjammer South pit towards the west and into the southwest gap area. There is a potential of also expanding to the southwest on Windjammer South.”
On the valuation upside potential, Montgomery says Moneta has created a significant gold camp development company with a significant resource base. “Our resources with the consolidation jump from 5.5 to 8.4 million ounces; also, our peer average is well below our peers and we believe we’re undervalued in this case.”
Moneta is also looking at modeling the southwest. There is some low-grade surface gold that they’re going to try and model into an open pit and some additional test work on their new deposits and resources.
Toward the end of 2021, the company hopes to put out an updated resource estimation and then they’ll enter into 2022 with expanded PEA. “We’ve hit the first milestone of consolidating the acquisition of the Garrison Gold project, we’re halfway through our 70,000 meter program, and we’ll be finishing that up into the fall at which time we will be starting an expanded resource update and some additional metallurgical work.”
“We’ve been working on this project for about 40 years, but there’s been a lot of hiatuses,” said Montgomery. “And three years ago, we had a change in management and the new management came in and looked at the resources and said hey, we’ve got some high grade potential here. So we focused on high-grade vein zones and came up with a 2.1 million ounce resource at the southwest deposit. And since then, we’ve been focusing on, we’re going back to the open pit stuff and seeing if we can upgrade and better constrain the ore zones in the pits.”
Montgomery concluded his remarks by saying, “We’re quite happy with the resources we have, and we’re pushing towards mining them in the near future.”

Extending mineralization at Westaway

“We are excited to continue to intersect significant gold mineralization from drill holes in our resource expansion drilling at the new Westaway deposit”, said CEO, Gary O’Connor. “The drilling has intersected gold mineralization in large step-outs to the south and west as well as at depth as we look to expand the current underground gold resources at Westaway. Additional holes and assays are still pending from the current drill program which has been testing the resource expansion potential at Westway. Resource expansion drilling is also ongoing on the South West, Windjammer South and 55 resource areas as well as the new Halfway target. The Westaway underground resource currently consists of 662,000 ounces gold inferred resources at a 3.00 g/t Au cut-off within a total Tower Gold project resource of 4.00 Moz gold indicated and 4.40 Moz gold inferred.”
The drill holes were drilled as part of the expanded 2020/2021 winter drill program on the Tower Gold Project located 100 km east of Timmins.

HIGHLIGHTS
Drilling has intersected significant gold mineralization in resource step out drill holes at Westaway extending gold mineralization beyond the current resource estimate:  MGH21-197, located within the West Block area extended gold mineralization to the south and at depth: Intersected 8.00m @ 5.34 g/t Au including 4.00m @ 10.01 g/t Au, including 2.00m @ 15.25 g/t Au, including 1.00m @ 17.60 g/t Au.  MGH21-196, located within the West Block area extended gold mineralization to the south and to depth: Intersected 19.30m @ 3.94 g/t Au, including 4.50m @ 8.09 gt Au, including1.70m @ 16.82 g/t Au, including 0.70 m @ 20.00 g/t Au and Intersected 3.45m @ 6.86 g/t Au.  MGH21-190, located on the western and depth extensions of the Westaway resource: Intersected 7.10m @ 2.98 g/t Au, including 4.90m @ 4.06 gtAu,including 0.54m @ 7.64 g/t Au.  MGH21-186, located 300 m south of the current resources in the South Basin area: Intersected 7.00m @ 2.13 g/t Au including 1.00m @ 5.39 gtAu, Intersected 4.00m @ 3.32 g/t Au including 1.00m @ 8.95 g/t Au and Intersected 5.00m @ 4.78 g/t Au including 1.00m @ 8.36 g/t Au

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