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General Metals Corporation |
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December 2, 2013 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Focused on Monetizing their Independence Gold Project in the prolific Battle Mountain Mining District of Nevada |
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General Metals
Corporation is an aggressive junior minerals exploration and development
company, based in Reno, Nevada. The Company is actively exploring and
developing its 100% controlled Independence property strategically located
in the prolific Battle Mountain Mining District of Nevada. The Company's
"flagship" project is the Independence Gold Project, situated in the
prolific Battle Mountain - Cortez gold belt of north central Nevada. General
Metals holds 14 mining claims encompassing 240 acres with 100% control of
the leasehold interest, subject to a sliding scale royalty. The Company also
owns 480 acres of fee land near the Independence which can be used in heap
leaching operations or as waste dumps.
Daniel J. Forbush,
a Certified Public Accountant, brings over 30 years of mining industry
experience at such Fortune 500 firms as Glamis Gold, Ltd., AMOCO, TENNECO
and Arthur Andersen & Company. He was initially recruited as Controller for
Glamis Gold, Inc., the U.S. operating entity of Glamis Gold, Ltd., serving
therein from 1988 to 1997, and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer from
1997 to 1999, for Glamis Gold, Ltd., directing all aspects of financial,
administrative and operations management for this $200MM NYSE-listed,
multi-national corporation. Beginning in 1999, Mr. Forbush focused on
start-up opportunities, including the building of a public accounting firm
and business consulting firm (Forbush and Associates). Since January of
2004, Dan has functioned as Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for a $25
million residential development and building contractor and a number of
other smaller enterprises. Prior experience includes Corporate Director of
Managerial Accounting, Echo Bay Mines, Ltd., 1986-1987; Nevada Operations
Controller for Tenneco Minerals, prior to its acquisition by Echo Bay Lines;
General Accounting Supervisor for AMOCO; Assistant Controller for Cyprus
Industrial Metals Company; and Senior Auditor for Arthur Andersen & Company.
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Reno, NV 89503
General Metals Corporation
Print Version
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Interview conducted by: Bud Wayne, Editorial Executive, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – December 2, 2013
Mr. Forbush: Our project known as The Independence is located 35 miles southwest of Battle Mountain Nevada. The general region is highly productive. We have actually drilled the project enough to know that there is a quarter of million ounces of gold in the shallow configuration. We are expecting to produce most of that. We also think that the project can double or triple in size. We have had a very slow period of development over the last twelve months because the funding markets have been extremely tight and in some ways actually detrimental to the junior gold market. We have been fortunate enough to have found support from some of our shareholders and other new parties that have found our company and believe that the project is very viable and well worth the effort. They have kept the project moving forward. We have had some preliminary economic pit designs that we are looking at and working through. The first Phase looks like it would be producing between 25,000 and 35,000 ounces a year over a three-year period; maybe four years depending upon how the flow of metal comes out of it. That would leave about half of our shallow configuration resources in the ground and enhance our ability to expand to another three or four hundred thousand ounces to the north and to the east.
CEOCFO: You mentioned some people are taking note of your company. I noticed one transaction you did with Open Gold Corp that presumably would generate a nice sum of funding for you. Would you like to talk about that a little bit? Mr. Forbush: Open Gold Corporation and General Metals (us) agreed to a transaction in which we would actually sell them our project for 64% of their company, the 64% of which would be transferred to our shareholders after OPG have done their filings with the SEC and TSX-V. Their prerequisite Is to raise two million, three hundred fifty thousand dollars or more before the deal can close. To date they have had significant difficulty because of the markets. The definitive agreement as disclosed in our 10k expired on August 12th but we agreed to negotiate an extension. On October 21, 2013 Open Gold announce that they cancelled this transaction. In the meantime because of the economic environment for our junior mining industry, we have been working diligently with a number of other sources of funding and are very excited about the potential of these five or six different opportunities on which we are working.
CEOCFO: Would you touch on your initiatives with the new core assay analysis? Mr. Forbush: We took the core from the drilling we used for geotechnical purposes and have split it and sent it to the assay labs. We are currently reviewing the results and preparing a release on those results and we should be able to do that within the next couple of weeks. The assay lab has completed their portion and the geologist is working on his. We will have more on that shortly within the next couple of weeks.
CEOCFO: Do you have the corporate infrastructure in place to continue with your efforts? Mr. Forbush: We are using contract professionals to do the job. We are also looking at the share structure and it impact on our ability to complete the project. We are asking our shareholders to help us by authorizing the board to execute a reverse split as well as a name change. The current company name does not reflect what the company does. The proposed name is Cibolan Gold. Cibola is one of the seven lost cities of gold. We are proposing to our shareholders approve the name as well as a reverse split. The reverse split is required in order to list on the Canadian markets to give us access to capital in the more favorable to mining Canadian markets. Our mining engineer is working on an updated Canadian National Instrument 43-101 compliant technical report on the project with a new current effective date. This should take about a couple of months to complete and once done we will complete our application with the Toronto Ventures Exchange enabling our listing in Canada. We will then be in a position to raise additional funding in Canada which historically has been much more friendly toward mining projects than OTC:QB market. The core work has been completed as well as a number of other important steps have been completed or started and we are working through the funding necessary to complete all requirements for filing our application to permit ore processing.
CEOCFO: You are still on the QB as well as Berlin. Is that correct? Mr. Forbush: That is correct.
CEOCFO: How has the Berlin been working out for you? Mr. Forbush: It has exhibited neither help nor detriment at this time that I can tell, although we do have some investor relations consultants responding enthusiastically about the company in middle Europe where they indicate that with public relations support capital to fund the Company once we spread our story in Germany. They estimate they could see the price of our stock to quadruple easily, as a result of the demand they could bring into the Berlin market. We have not gone that route yet. We wanted first to ensure that the project is moving forward before we allocate funding into investor relations functions. We are firm believers that the greatest return to our shareholders results from actively pursuing progress on the project.
CEOCFO: When we last spoke there were some analysts showing interest in your company. I think Primary Equity Research just initiated coverage. Are they still covering you and what has the interest been like? Mr. Forbush: They are continuing to cover us. A new analyst report is being prepared now. We are actively working them as we speak. We expect this coverage will come out soon and then within ninety to a hundred and twenty days they plan to issue an update as a result of additional developments from the deployment of the expected funding support. We expect to dramatically enhance the projects mineral estimates and related company value.
CEOCFO: Is there anything you would like to touch on in closing? Mr. Forbush: We are working on what a smaller pit might look like so that we could put it on a leach pad on our property close to the mining. From what we understand in discussions with the Bureau of Land Management, we should be able to complete the permitting process with an Environmental Assessment instead of an Environmental Impact Statement, thereby allowing us to complete the process in eight or nine months. A trusted, very conservative engineer prepared an analysis using a small pit shell. The results of that work seem to indicate that we could put up to five million tons of ore from this small pit on a leach pad on our claim block and make a fair return on our investment for our shareholders. With the initial phase of funding that we are securing right now of about $3 million, we think that we can drill out the north and east portion of the project. We anticipate an increase in the number of tons from the sixteen million that is in the report now to maybe as much as fifty million tons from this activity. The grade would be about the same as we have seen so far. Some areas we believe we could contain much higher-grade material such as the areas around holes 127 and 128 drilled at the end of our 2009-2010 program. One hole had a ten foot intercept of one-ounce gold/one-ounce silver. A few hundred feet on strike from that hole is another with a fifteen-foot intercept of one-ounce gold/once-ounce silver. We want to drill around those holes to determine if there is a pocket of higher-grade material there that could increase the economic value of our five million ton heap leach. We have a tremendous amount of upside with the project. We have much work we desire to complete in the next year. A $3 million budget includes $1.1 million for what we call the Sunshine Extension, about $400 thousand to complete some infill drilling in our preliminary pit. The objective of that drilling is to determine if we can upgrade the ounces, if we can increase the grade of the mineralization in the area that we are actually going to mine. There are a number of holes in the project that need to have additional drilling close by them to find out if the material there is either waste or ore. If some of the material currently identified as waste is ore, we can lower the cost of our five million ton program leaching operations considerably.
CEOCFO:
Is this all in the Independence Gold area?
CEOCFO: You are going through a name-change. Do you see the company today as well as in the future as an exploration and development company or do you ever see the company as into production? Mr. Forbush: We are pushing to be a producer because we believe this the way we maximize the value to our shareholders. However, we are not opposed to selling the project for the right price. Our neighbor actually drilled up to a dozen holes along our northern claim lines. We believe the reason they have done is to determine if their deposit comes to the edge of our claims. Our personal assessment is that the deposit our neighbor has identified goes into our claims and comes out the other side. Part of our $1.1 million drilling program is to parallel those holes closest to us on the northern end so that we can understand what is happening to the mineralization there and determine if our assessment is accurate.
CEOCFO: What would you like to say to the business and investment community? Mr. Forbush: Our highest priority at this point is to monetize this project for our shareholders as soon as possible. One alternative to maximize the monetization is to sell the project to our neighbor. There are a number of synergies in this approach, which should provide significant value to our shareholder as well as to our neighbor.
We have a tremendous shareholder support as well as other interest of other mining people throughout the US and Canada that are stepping up to the plate and assisting us in the funding effort. We believe that the worldwide economic situation is bullish for the gold price and as such very helpful to our valuations as well as our future profitability.
One interesting factoid that I learned over the years is that a fine custom-made suit in 1900 would cost one ounce of gold and today a custom suit would cost you about one ounce of gold. It shows that gold is an inflation hedge. We believe that the upside potential for the gold price is significant.
The fact that we
have identified gold in our project and it has been certified by a
professional mining engineer; a qualified person according to the Canadian
National Instrument 43-101 regulations, tends to indicate that this is not
just a junior mining company spouting a number for fun, it really is a
number that the investment community recognizes and accepts. As such, we are
a very good prospect for your investment dollars. |
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