Copper Mining with Max Porterfield

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one level, this is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong, powerful Max Porterfield, Max, you’re ready to do this.

Unknown Speaker 0:19
I am I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

george grombacher 0:21
I’m excited to have you on max is the president CEO and director of callinectes minds, they’re leading Junior miner focused on gold, silver, zinc, lead, copper and established deposits. Max, tell us a little about your personal life some more about your work and why you do what you do?

Unknown Speaker 0:39
Well, I’m raised in, in Texas, I’m an immigrant to Canada and dual citizen now. So I’ve kind of had natural resources in my bloodline. Since birth, I was born in West Texas, where WTI is named for West Texas Intermediate oil prices. And when I immigrated to Canada was really to change the world in my own unique way. And I did so after spending a lot of time at a university working for a boutique investment firm specialized in natural resources, and then immigrated to Canada working on the corporate side from some companies that were advancing assets, both in the United States as well as Latin America, in the uranium and gold space, and then ultimately had the opportunity to take over callinectes in 2014, we’ve assembled a team with the long term vision to discovering the next mine for a local community, in northern Manitoba. And an area that’s known for very, very high grade copper deposits also carries gold, silver and zinc as byproducts. And that’s really been my life’s mission and purpose and passion. And we recently had a discovery out there named rainbow that we’ve been actively expanding in a very critical time for that community. And that’s really why I live my life as an entrepreneur, is to wake up every day, and how can I change not only the lives of 1000s of people, but impacts millions of people with ultimate products, these metals are critical to go into that we really take for granted.

george grombacher 2:02
Nice, I appreciate that. So talk about a critical time for the community are and we’re talking about Northern Manitoba, is is is the town there because of the mind. My

Unknown Speaker 2:16
colleagues, they’ve done it before. So the technical team here at callinectes, has found three of the four largest minds for this little talent in its history. And that, again, is 100 years of mining, and across 29 Different mines. So on a global basis, they’re very unique in terms of how high grade they are, and how rich they are in terms of metal content, compared to other mines around the world. And as the world shifts from, you know, away from the hydrocarbon, oil and gas into electric vehicles, these metals, the base metals, in particular, copper is absolutely critical to that. And to shift away from that you’re going to need vast amounts of copper that simply you had a lack of investment in exploration of these type of deposits over the past decade.

george grombacher 3:05
So 100 years of mining in three actual functional minds. How, how big is this landmass that we’re talking about? And

Unknown Speaker 3:17
it was 20. It was actually there’s been 32 mines in the belt in this town has produced 29 Mines, our team has been three of the four largest mines in the belts history. So again, you have the anchor mines that have really long lasting job growth, or job creation and sustainability. And obviously that has further down the supply chain as well. And then you have the smaller ones that have been kind of ancillary to that infrastructure throughout that time. Got it the really mineral mining camp. It’s been on a global basis.

george grombacher 3:51
So how, how big is this area? And how has technology impacted the way that your your that that that you’ve mined, if at all?

Unknown Speaker 4:03
Yeah, so in terms of the area, I mean, we’re talking hundreds of kilometers, you know, in distances. So these camps go, there’s this Greenstone belt is what it’s called, it’s a belt of minerals that essentially been deposited. They’re actually originally deposited from subsea for volcanic activity and displace their millions of years in terms of technology and how this is all been done. In terms of we’re also located is key, I should mention that within 30 minutes drive by existing road to the town, and there actually is a hydroelectric power line within 100 or 200 meters of the deposit. So while it’s one of the highest grade copper discoveries in the world, it also has the ability in some not only the province, but on the property right next to the discovery to have clean low cost power. So when you look in terms of what is your mind supply moving forward as you moved away from the hydrocarbon whether it be coal oil, natural gas. It’s how are the metals produced in it? What grades are they produced to feed into that really dictates how clean is your electric vehicle. Now in terms of technology and how these mines were historically found, it was really a one trick pony, when I kind of came to learn to exploration within a lot of these mining camps, in this space on electromagnetics, so each mineral that you’re looking for has a rock property. And that rock property is why it’s so utilized in industry, whether it’s conductivity, to transfer electricity. So you look for these different rock properties using different tools. So historically, the discoveries have been made most of them through electromagnetics, where you’re looking for a conductive source in the ground. And with that being said, if you only look one way, you only find things one way. And the challenge in a lot of these deposits is they’re not, they’re very, very rich, but they’re not very big in size, the typical deposit might be about 150 yards long. About between, I’m talking just trying to go from meters to yards, so roughly similar, but between three to eight meters or yards wide. And then they deeply plunging. So your footprint of your taking a picture above them, can be quite small. And so what we did to make the discovery of rainbow was, you know, the definition, Sandy’s thinking the same way over expecting a different result in there’s been a lot of money that’s been spent on exploration, looking for the next day in your mind that it hasn’t bear the fruits of all that money spent. And so what we did when we kind of had a rethink on this area that’s always had the endowment geologically to host a large deposit. And we weren’t the only ones to think so numerous. Big mining companies historically have been looking for a large deposit on our land package. It was, how can we look at things differently? And so we utilize a technology called induced polarization, and sort of electromagnetics and induced polarization looks for different rock properties. resistivity and chargeable, how chargeable the rocks and how resistive are they, and so you’re looking for a high chargeability or low resistivity. But with the idea that the deposit itself is going to be highly conductive. But when you look at a halo around that deposit, it can be less conductive or less. You’re looking for different rock property, we’re looking for chargeability, a halo from the disseminated pyrite, I don’t want to get too sciency but low levels of pyrite that were around the high grade copper. And so that’s how we made the discoveries using IP, as opposed to traditional tools in just straight using electromagnetics. And it’s very favorable geology. Hopefully it wasn’t too long winded or complicated, but it’s

george grombacher 7:44
no. So just just through the through the old methods, you wouldn’t have found it.

Unknown Speaker 7:50
No, it wouldn’t have found it because it actually sits in the flanks of formational conductive body that’s barren. And so using this different technology in a different way, has really enhanced the ability to find these deposits, and in particular in areas where they’d be different, develop the pinout relative to something that’s more conductive off nearby.

george grombacher 8:14
So the traditional way that that that y’all identified potential rocks in the ground minerals in the ground. Yeah. How is that from a cost perspective versus the new induced polarization?

Unknown Speaker 8:32
So Casa surveys are quite reasonable in terms in the mining space. And it’s really about who does the surveys and having everybody that is passionate what we’re doing, you know, it’s like going to the doctor, if your doctor is a doctor that’s passionate about the work that they do, they’re going to spend time and care and understanding in the work that they do. So I think that’s one of the key things in terms of costs, there’s similar costs, I think that we can be much more effective with our exploration dollars to lead to discoveries, because in the industry, the statistical odds of a discovery leading from making discovery that goes into production are one in 4000. Right? So it’s how do you reduce those odds, and the way that we look to reduce the odds are sticking within proximity infrastructure, because candidly, when you’re looking through remotely, you have huge, much larger upfront capital costs to explore remote, because you got to give the people the power, the water, the access helicopter in and out, just to drill and develop a deposit and then get the infrastructure all out there to ultimately mine that deposit. It’s, you know, I’m times capex, kind of doing capital costs in the billions of dollars on these remote opportunities. Whereas if you, in our opinion, explore within prolific mining jurisdictions that have the pedigree of the rocks that have posted numerous deposits that have gone into being producers, you is a good place to start looking. And also you have the infrastructure in place you can leverage off in a much more cleaner way effect infrastructures there is idle is infrastructure that doesn’t need to be rebuilt and re permanent in many ways. And so I think that’s the real opportunity to reduce your odds, obviously, have a great team within a mining community and then further reduce your upfront capital costs, both from an exploration standpoint and development standpoint, by being in these mature mining camps, but when you’re in the mature mining camps change the way you look for things.

george grombacher 10:25
Yeah, that certainly makes sense. That is to degree staggering that only one in 4000 discoveries actually go to production. And but But I suppose that it also makes sense. So you have made a discovery, using this induced polarization? Is there more drilling and testing to do to to prove it out? Or, and what? What are the next steps to hopefully move towards an actual production?

Unknown Speaker 10:55
Yeah, so you have too much of an oil and gas, because gas is fluid. And so your path to production is much more challenging in terms of mining, you’re going to drill out the deposit. But that’s why when you make a discovery, the mineral exploration business, they can create, you know, 100 million billion dollar market cap companies, because when you find a big discovery, it’s really, you know, like a, in a biotech scenario, if you’re looking at a biotech stock, you’re looking for companies that are de risking their drug, through clinical trials to solve a problem to help people, right, and we’re doing the same thing, except our clinical trials are really testing targets in drilling on discoveries, as de risking the assets and building value. So the process, you know, in terms of rainbow, we made the discovery of rainbow with initially PVM 111 was a discovery hole that was discovered in August 8 of 2020. And then we recapitalize the company last February, and have now had over 72 holes into the deposit area, you know, systematically drilling down expanding the deposit. And then once you get to a certain stage, we’ll go to a resource, smaller modeler, and we actually just recently retained one that’s well respected within the industry, that will then model the resources based upon the assays from each drill hole. And so in terms of how unique rainbow happens to be is, it’s one of the highest grade copper discoveries in the world. If you look at the average grade copper mined on a global basis is only half a percent. So removing a ton of rock. And half percent of that rock is rock you want to recover. Very, very bulk tonnage, low grade operations that I wouldn’t really say is the most environmentally friendly way to do things relative but it’s very critical. If you look on a global basis, not just in copper, but in all commodities, you’ve got declining grades, over the past several decades, because the easy discoveries have been found, right? To be in one of the top 10 highest grade copper mines in the world, for example, you need to have over 3.75% Copper, right to be the top 10. And a majority of those high grade copper mines are in geopolitically unstable countries like Central Africa and the Congo, the DRC. And then that’s what makes Flin Flon Manitoba. So unique on a global basis is it’s known for its exceptionally high grade copper, a read Lake mine, which is a mine that was 130 kilometers away from the town produced and that was the fifth or sixth highest grade copper mine, when it was in production for several years. And that is indicative of the type of grades that can be found there. And in terms of rainbow rainbows grades are well north, over three and a half percent copper and also carries gold, silver and zinc as byproducts. And so when you couple the high grade nature of rainbow with the hydroelectric power at a very key time with the triple seven mine shutting down at town in just three months from now, it creates very, very unique scenario where we’ve had our long term vision that we established in 2014 that we’re executing, marching to as we delineate the deposit through drilling. And then what we’ve done over the past several months behind the scenes that we were starting to outline that is exploration targeting for 2022. So we’re looking to find not just white rainbow, but what’s rainbow and beyond for the area. And I’m very excited about the potential with that because we’re using the refining method that we use to discover rainbow and now expanding that on our very large land package.

george grombacher 14:27
Nice. That’s that’s super exciting time.

Unknown Speaker 14:30
Yeah, no, I’m listening. I actually, I carry this on my desk. You can see why I’m so excited. That is some very, very high grade copper that’s been polished obviously the core This is the back of the core. But I mean this is this is like my baby I don’t know father yet. But in terms of fatherhood, this is what some very, very high grade copper looks like. Got a rainbow.

george grombacher 14:52
Nice. That’s fascinating. So August the 2020. You’re sort of proved it out and you recapitalize the company. drilled 70 holes create this model this resource model identified that the quality of the coppers is upwards of three and a half percent. There’s one mine that is going out of production. So the timing is perfect. All the resources are there. How do people get involved?

Unknown Speaker 15:18
Well, they can become shareholders like myself, I’m a very large shareholder of the company. I am just under 5%. Myself and my family has also been a great supporters of institutional and family shareholders that are also about over 30% of the float. But you can buy shares on the secondary market around ultimately the stock market. In the in Canada, we trade under the Toronto Venture Exchange, ticker cn X. But for the US investors out there, we trade with OTC q x and the ticker CLL X f. And then we put up a lot of news flow as we drill out the discovery. And we do targeting and we do updates to our shoulders on a regular basis. And you can find out more information and sign up to receive our news directly@callinectes.ca, which is spelled ca ll ing x.ca. And maybe you can link to that as well. But that’d be how to be involved in what we’re up to.

george grombacher 16:12
Well, Max, people ready for your difference making tip? What do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 16:16
I think you just do what you’re passionate about and follow your heart and your instinct and stick with it. No matter how challenging things might be at any given time. I think if you work at something focused on that something you’re passionate about it everything will fall in line ultimately for the greater good.

george grombacher 16:33
Well, I think that is great stuff that definitely gets come up. Max, thank you so much for coming on. Give us the give us the website again and give us the ticker again if we want to invest.

Unknown Speaker 16:44
You can do so by visiting our website at Callan x.ca L L I N E x.ca. We trade in Canada on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the ticker C annex, but also in the United States on the OTC QX exchange under the ticker CLL XF.

george grombacher 17:04
Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show max your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Callan x.ca, that’s ca L L I N E x.ca. Check out everything they’re working on. You can invest via the TSX and the ticker is cn x, or you can invest over the counter in the United States at CL lxF. Thanks, Max. Thanks so much for having me. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai