Getting In On Gold: Mining In Mineral-Rich West Africa With Pasofino Gold

Benzinga

Brett Richards, CEO and executive director of Pasofino Gold Ltd., was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.   Pasofino Gold is a Canada-based mineral exploration company with mining operations in Liberia, a West African country that has significant gold reserves and a government actively courting investments for mining and refining. The company's Dugbe Gold Project is within the Birimian geological province, one of what the company says is the last remaining under-explored parts of West African gold deposits.   Pasofino Gold, which has a ground holding of 2,078 km and 2.76M oz in reserves, just inked a cooperation deal with Hummingbird Resources PLC. – which owns 50.8% of the company – and West African investment firm Nioko Resources, to give the mining project a boost. With an update of its feasibility study in the works and with gold prices soaring, the deal seems perfectly timed.

Transcript

00:00and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome in the ceo and executive director of pacifino gold

00:09limited brett richards wonderful to be with you today brett hey dan thanks for having me on

00:13appreciate it the dream is alive let's start out if we can and give an overview of pacifino for

00:18those who aren't familiar yeah we uh we have the dubai gold project in liberia and uh it has been

00:27kind of in our portfolio for a number of years and prior to that hummingbird resources portfolio

00:33we uh completed a feasibility study in 2022 and uh we're about to uh to update it so

00:41you know i heard 13 say earlier that it's going to be a quiet day take a look at the gold price

00:47up three percent today thirty three hundred dollar all-time high today great place to be in yeah it's

00:53been uh it's been crazy watching gold lately i mean just an incredible you know safe asset that

00:58people are loving and let's talk about that dubai gold project how large is it and what kind of

01:03mineral concentration is there brett yeah so we have uh over 2 000 square kilometers uh of land

01:10package in liberia and liberia is a extremely strong very stable democracy not like uh some of the other

01:17countries in west africa but we have um we have almost 4 million ounces 3.3 million ounces of that

01:24in our feasibility study at 1.37 grams per ton this is a real project and it's getting more exciting by

01:31the day and happy to walk you through the economics of what we did in 2022 but when we update this it's

01:37only going to get better it's definitely well and listen as you've been talking about a lot has been

01:42happening in the last months obviously the acquisition of hummingbird by nike resources

01:46corporation can you walk us through that deal and what it means for pacifino shareholders

01:51yeah absolutely so nyoko resources acquired uh hummingbird they are our majority shareholder they own

01:5950.8 percent and we just came into a uh a cooperation support agreement with them whereby for the next 18

02:06months our strategy is aligned completely aligned with them they have committed to funding their

02:13pro rata share for the next 18 months and we are going to update this feasibility study for a couple

02:19of reasons the gold price used back when it was done in 2022 was 1600 dollars and as i said earlier

02:26it's 3 300 today so that that itself is going to really amp up the economics of this project yeah

02:33but i remember you i was obviously a while ago but i sold a couple ounces ago for 800 an ounce i mean it's

02:38just unbelievable uh let's talk about what that cooperation with hummingbird and nyoko resource will

02:44look like yeah so for the next 18 months uh we have agreed with them that they will they will work

02:51side by side with us nobody has board control um you know whether it's uh nyoko or whether it's the

02:58former directors of uh of pasifino but we're all collaborating together strategically we're aligned

03:04funding wise we're we're aligned and i i think over the next 18 months my job is to get as many new eyes

03:13on this story as possible let people know that this is one of the most undervalued gold projects on the

03:20planet today 400 million capex 1 000 all in sustaining costs and six times uh npv post-tax

03:31after uh at this gold price today so you talk 2.4 2.5 billion dollar post-tax npv on a 400 million

03:39dollar capex project pretty exciting stuff for the market yeah i don't know i can't fire you up it's

03:44getting me fired up also brian i know as part of that deal pasifino is going to raise funds out in the

03:49doug bay gold project feasibility study how much will you need to raise and how long do you expect

03:54the update to take so i expect the update to take about 12 months uh we do need to do some drilling

04:00i do and these are all positives the the drilling we need to do is only going to enhance the size of

04:06the resource it's only going to enhance the economics of the new feasibility study we're going to do we are

04:12going to look at some power alternatives we are going to look at you know optimizing a new mine plan

04:17based on using different gold prices so from that standpoint yeah we're going to be sitting here next

04:24year talking about getting ready to project finance and getting ready to build this uh and and that's

04:30that's going to be a fairly exciting from the from the financing standard standpoint um nyoko has agreed

04:37to fund up to 10 million dollars of their share of being half and 15 million dollars next year so we we

04:45would we we have their commitment to actually do more than than what we need to which which leaves

04:51no overhang anymore and we're trading uh circa 10 an ounce today it is uh as i said pretty undervalued in

05:00these uh in these uh markets and brett obviously talked about gold being on that rocket ship i watch it

05:06every day i you know it's it's amazing though to watch this go where it's at it's up nearly 40 percent in the

05:12last year do you this is a big question though 40 you know million dollar question do you see that

05:17trend continuing i think the geopolitical instability the tariff wars and all things going on kind of in

05:25between the us and the world and other things happening in the world investors have said i don't

05:31know an asset class that i i can get into that i'm going to be protected by all this so what they're

05:37doing is saying hey you know what i'm going to get into gold and you get central banks continuing to

05:42buy gold at the same time as you've got investors flocking to it it's why we've powered up 24 so far

05:48this year and 27 last year so i think that trend is going to continue goldman sachs just came out

05:55and and put a four thousand dollar gold price marker on for 2025 that is that is uh going to raise

06:02the consensus and we're seeing consensus pricing coming in at 37 3800 for the balance of 2025 so

06:09gold is strong you know we are in the strongest bull market i have seen in 25 years of being in the gold

06:15business nothing like this the difference this time is that gold equities are still trading on a per

06:21ounce basis versus the quality of the asset as they were 20 years ago you know we still get you know we

06:27should be getting 20 for an inferred ounce 50 for mni and 180 for inferred or for for reserves and we're

06:36getting nowhere near that so the decoupling from the gold valuation of equities to the gold price also

06:45has to bolster this bull run for for for gold exposure it's definitely an amazing time to get

06:51involved and be involved with gold uh brad it's always great seeing you it was an absolute pleasure

06:55talking to me thank you so much for your time

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