Junior mining companies play a pivotal role in the exploration and development of mineral resources, contributing to the growth and dynamism of the mining industry. These companies, often characterized by their smaller market capitalization and a focus on exploration, carry both unique opportunities and risks. In this article, we will delve into the operations of junior mining companies Canada, exploring the key factors that shape their endeavors and the considerations for investors navigating this dynamic sector.

Exploration and Discovery of Junior Mining Companies Canada

At the heart of junior mining companies lies the pursuit of untapped mineral resources. Unlike their larger counterparts, juniors are primarily engaged in exploration activities, seeking to identify new deposits of precious metals, base metals, rare earth elements, and other commodities. Exploration involves geological surveys, sampling, and drilling to assess the potential economic viability of a site.

·   Challenges and Risks

Capital Intensity: Exploration is a capital-intensive process, and Junior Mining Companies Canada often need help in securing the necessary funding. They may rely on a combination of equity financing, debt, and strategic partnerships to fund their exploration programs.

Market Volatility: Junior mining stocks are known for their inherent volatility. Share prices can experience significant fluctuations based on exploration results, commodity prices, and broader market conditions.

Regulatory Hurdles: Navigating regulatory frameworks, obtaining permits, and adhering to environmental and social standards are crucial aspects of a Junior Mining Companies Canada's operations. Regulatory compliance adds complexity and can impact project timelines.

Development and Feasibility

Upon the discovery of a promising mineral deposit, Junior Mining Companies Canada transition from exploration to project development. This phase involves conducting feasibility studies to assess the economic viability of extracting and processing the mineral resources. Factors such as ore grade, metallurgy, infrastructure, and projected operating costs are meticulously analyzed.

·   Challenges and Risks

Project Financing: Developing a mine requires substantial capital investment. Junior Mining Companies Canada must secure financing to construct the necessary infrastructure, purchase equipment, and cover operating expenses during the development phase.

Technical Challenges: Extracting minerals from the earth involves complex technical processes. Junior miners face challenges related to engineering, metallurgy, and the optimization of extraction methods.

Market Conditions: The economic viability of a mining project is heavily influenced by commodity prices. Junior mining companies must carefully assess market conditions and commodity trends to make informed decisions about project development.

Production and Operations

Upon successful project development, junior mining companies move into the production phase. This stage involves extracting and processing minerals on a commercial scale. Operational efficiency, cost management, and adherence to safety and environmental standards become paramount.

·   Challenges and Risks

Operational Costs: Managing operational costs is critical to the financial success of a mining operation. Fluctuations in energy prices, labor costs, and unforeseen technical challenges can impact the company's bottom line.

Market Fluctuations: The profitability of a mining operation is closely tied to commodity prices. Junior mining companies may implement hedging strategies or flexible production plans to navigate market volatility.

Technological Innovation

Junior mining companies often leverage technological advancements to enhance exploration and production processes. Innovations such as remote sensing, drone technology, and advanced geological modeling tools contribute to more efficient and cost-effective operations. Embracing these technologies can give junior miners a competitive edge in their exploration and extraction efforts.

Resource Estimation and Reserves

Accurate resource estimation is crucial for the success of a mining project. Junior Mining Companies Canada engage in detailed geological studies to estimate the size and quality of the mineral deposit. Independent experts may validate these estimates, and companies must adhere to industry standards for reporting mineral reserves.

Community Engagement and Social Responsibility

Junior mining companies operate in diverse social and environmental contexts. Successful projects require effective community engagement, addressing concerns, and contributing positively to local economies. Adhering to social responsibility standards not only ensures ethical practices but also mitigates potential operational risks stemming from community opposition or environmental issues.

Lifecycle of a Mining Project

Understanding the distinct phases of a mining project's lifecycle is essential for investors. From exploration to closure, each phase presents unique challenges and milestones. Junior mining companies must have a well-defined strategy for each stage, demonstrating their ability to navigate the complexities inherent in the full lifecycle of mining operations.

Financing Strategies

Junior Mining Companies Canada often employ various financing strategies to fund their operations. These may include private placements, streaming agreements, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships. Investors should assess a company's ability to secure financing, the terms of such arrangements, and the potential impact on shareholder value.

Market Access and Offtake Agreements

Securing access to markets for the mined commodities is crucial for a junior mining company's success. Offtake agreements, which involve pre-selling a portion of the production to buyers, provide revenue certainty and can aid in project financing. Investors should evaluate the terms of these agreements and assess the company's ability to market and sell its products competitively.

Currency Risks

Junior mining companies operating in multiple jurisdictions may be exposed to currency risks. Fluctuations in exchange rates can impact project economics, especially if production costs are in one currency and revenues are generated in another. Robust risk management strategies, including currency hedging, are vital to mitigate these risks.

Project Scalability and Expansion Potential

The scalability of a mining project is a key consideration for junior mining companies. Investors should assess whether a company's project has the potential for expansion and increased production over time. Scalable projects provide the opportunity for long-term growth and increased returns for investors.

Environmental Permitting and Compliance

Environmental permitting is a critical aspect of mining operations. Junior mining companies must navigate complex regulatory processes to obtain the necessary permits for exploration, development, and production. Compliance with environmental standards is not only a legal requirement but also crucial for maintaining a positive reputation.

Global Economic Trends

The mining industry is inherently linked to global economic trends. Factors such as economic growth, inflation, and global demand for commodities influence market conditions. Investors should consider macroeconomic indicators when evaluating the potential success of junior mining companies, as these factors can impact commodity prices and project economics.

Conclusion

Analyzing the operations of junior mining companies Canada requires a nuanced understanding of the industry's unique challenges and opportunities. Investors considering involvement in this sector should carefully assess the geological potential, management expertise, and financial health of these companies. While the junior mining space carries inherent risks, successful exploration and development projects can yield significant returns, making it an intriguing arena for those willing to navigate the complexities of the mining industry.

Finally, A Rally In Metals

This past few weeks has seen a nice rally in gold and other precious metals. Unfortunately it takes a crisis or a war to get gold to become that safe haven it's known for. However this time around we see all commodities across the board on the rise. Metals, energy, agriculture, you name it, it's heading up and a lot of this is due to inflation and excess money printing. I heard some financial analyst say real true inflation could hit 25% by next year.

Palladium has hit record highs of $3000+ per oz and copper is setting new highs also. Nickel has gone through the roof. Gold is seeing new highs which will be great for the placer miners however with the price of oil way back over $100 per barrel I can guarantee there won't be many bargains on fuel this summer. Fuel is one of the biggest expenses for miners these days and if your mining in Canada there is those new carbon taxes added to that fuel bill.

With higher oil prices though and the governments agenda for going green, lithium stocks should do well. Be careful of any resource plays in Chile at this time however because of the new government that is looking at nationalizing copper mining operations. This type of nonsense can spill over to all types of mining. So if your looking into South American lithium plays, maybe best stick with Argentina or Peru at the moment or even look into some of the juniors who are exploring in Nevada.

Speaking going green, one of the most used metals in the green agenda is silver and for the life of me I can't figure out why it is still priced the way it is. There are tons of ideas and theories about comex manipulation and naked paper shorts out there. I did read an article however that mentioned there are big buyers of bulk silver like Apple or Samsung that can't afford to have the price of silver to rally and these companies do their part in the suppression along with trading houses and banks. I was reading that First Majestic Silver was only selling as much silver as was required to keep operations going and stock piling the rest. If more miners did this instead of worrying about quarterly profits, I believe silver would become the item of luxury. One day all this nonsense may unravel but until then I think silver will be sub $30 USD.

With gold prices hitting new highs money is slowly starting to move over the miners. Last month Barrick said they will start buying back one billion dollars US dollars worth of their own stock back. Looking at the chart below you can tell it was well received. By the way, Barrick pays a dividend.

ABX Chart by TradingView

Good news for the Yukon. Newmont Mining got the go ahead for it's Coffee project that it got from when it took over Goldcorp. Goldcorp bought out the Kaminak Coffee gold project a few years back. The project is located about 130 KM south of Dawson City Yukon. The project consists of four open-pit gold mines as well as one permanent waste rock storage facility. With a mine life of ten years, the project is expected to have a 30 month construction period, during which up to 700 people will be employed.

Also in the Yukon, Western Copper's Casino project has gotten the green light to start building access roads. The Casino project mine could very well end up being one of the largest copper projects in the world.

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An Extremely Undervalued Gold Stock

I'm always on the look out for undervalued mining plays and over the years I've come up with a few juniors that were going along totally unnoticed by the general public. After doing a little bit of due diligence and maybe even a call to the company to get an updated story, some of these small undervalued juniors paid off well. Other times a subscriber will email me pointing out a stock that they think is undervalued too. In fact there are several write ups on this website that have been contributed by readers just like you who had a postion in a stock they felt was undervalued and wanted to share the information with others.

One of the issues you find is when you happen to come across a small penny stock that is sub 5 cents and doesn't trade often, is that we as investors tend to dismiss the stock even before we do any kind of investigation. When it comes to these sort of junior mining plays that are in the pennies most tend to think that the company only will have only a few claims in some far away place that will never see any kind of development. Today however I would like to tell you about a company that trades for pennies but just one of it's properties is probably worth more than the entire market cap of the company.

Know More About Rontline Gold Active Exploration

The company I am going to talk about today is Frontline Gold TSX-V:FGC. Here's a small junior that is sitting at a mere 2 cents at the time of this writing and what I can't wrap my head around is the "WHY". This junior has a portfolio of exploration properties in prime locations that a lot of junior companies would die for. There are seven properties in Ontario and three in Quebec. Both of these provinces are prime gold mining jurisdictions and most of the properties the company has are all located right close to where there is active mining operations. For the sake of simplicity and getting to the point on this junior, I'm only going to talk about two of the properties because these properties have the most to offer at this time.

Route 109

The first property is the Route 109 property in Quebec. This property is a large claim block of 100 claims covering 5588 hectares. A quick look at the map below will show just how close this property is to some active projects in the immediate area. For example, Maple Gold Mines TSX-V:MGM Douay gold project is active right now and has an established NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate of 8.6 million tonnes grading 1.52 g/t Au for 422,000 contained ounces of gold in the Indicated category. The inferred grades stands 71.2 million tonnes grading 1.03 g/t Au for 2.35 million ounces of gold. Other projects in the immediate area is the Vezza Mine with historical production grades of 6 grams per ton gold and Wallbridge's N2 Gold project which grades about 1.5 grams per ton. Route 109 is just a stones throw from this project and in May of this year Frontline did a 30 KM IP program on this property. This IP program will provide the company with definitive drill targets for an upcoming diamond drilling campaign. The geology group is at present working on drill targets with possible drilling in the first quarter of 2022.

In regards to any previous drilling on the Route 109 Property, there is some historical drill holes where significant intersections have been encountered. These include DH 92-CA-A-05 which intersected 0.608 g/t Au over 10.8m DH 92-CA-A-15 which intersected 102.4 g/t Ag over 2.45m and DH 96-Ca-A-20 which intersected 1.13 g/t Au over 45m which includes 10.95 g/t Au over 4m. Having historical drill information on hand plus the new IP data the company can expect some promising targets on the future drill program.

Crooked Pine Lake

Going over into Ontario where Frontline has seven properties, one of those properties stands out above the rest. This property is the Crooked Pine Lake property. This property consists of 8 multi-cell mining claims and 113 mining cells totaling 5,703 hectares. The property has excellent road access not far from Thunder Bay. Geologically speaking this property is located on the Quetico Fault which is similar to other faults in the area. As an excample one of these trending structures hosts 5 million ounces of gold that is in the Agnico Eagle Hammond Reef Deposit.

The company has gone ahead with a quite a bit of work on this property during this past summer of 2021. Actually work began in the fall of 2020 with a sampling program where samples were gathered at old trenches and diggings. These samples returned some very impressive results. Excamples from one trench was 7.03 g/t Au and 1.29 g/t Ag within a quartz vein. At another location samples returned 0.455 g/t Au and 1.74 g/t Ag.

Early summer in May 2021 the company under took another sampling program where results returned 3.06 g/t Au and 0.519 g/t Au. The Crooked Pine Property has been issued a permit for an initial three (3)-year term. This permit will allow the company to undertake various surface exploration activities on the property including potential trenching on up to 17 identified locations and over 65 diamond drilling hole locations. This this permit Frontline is now planning a phase 1 drill program on the Crooked Pine property. The drilling will most likely commence in the first quarter of 2022.

The company's other properties in Ontario include the Cameron Lake property in the Rainy River district which consists of 7 individual property groups covered by 21 mining claims and are located adjacent to Chalice Gold Mines Limited's Cameron Gold Project. Then there is the Copperlode property which consists 25 claim cells and 7 boundary cells. This property is in the Uchi subprovince area. There is also the Red Lake properties that include seven claim groups totaling 262 individual claims located approx. 80 kilometres east-northeast of the town of Red Lake. The Granite Ridge properties consist of 49 claim blocks totaling 995 hectares. Anyone who follows gold exploration knows that the Red Lake area is seeing a lot of activity.

Back over to Quebec, the company's additional properties include the Portage River Property and the NE Bachelor. The Portage River property has 28 claims totalling 1,567 hectares while the NE Bachelor is 62 mining claims totalling 3,454 hectares. Close to the Portage River property is the AMEX Perron Property Amex TSX-V:AMX which has been reporting impressive gold intersections along it's southeast trending structure. The Portage River Property is hosted along a parallel structure called the North Chicobi Fault.

Nunavut Property

In July of this year the company signed an option agreement to acquire an 80% interest in the high-grade Cu-Zn-Ag Epworth Project located in Nunavut. This project known as the Epworth Project is located less than 100KM south of the village of Kugluktuk and consists of 5 claims totaling 1,313

hectares.

International Projects

Lastly the company even has an international property located in Turkey. This property, the Menderes Gold Project is situated just south of Eldorado Gold's TSX:ELD
high grade Efencukuru Mine. This property consists of 4 permits encompassing 6,194 hectares. Exploration work at Menderes will concentrate on a southeastern extension of the Kokarpinar vein system with current inferred resources of 2.3Mt grading 6.64 gram per ton gold for 491,000 ounces of gold as per an Eldorado Gold 2019 43-101 technical report.

What I've written here barely scratches the surface of what all this company has. Fully diluted there is only 154 million shares outstanding and management owns around 30%. There is 200 thousand in cash in the treasury plus stock and assets and a drill program right around the corner. There is more than one analyst out there stating gold prices are not going to be where they are for much longer and most anyone who follows the gold market will tell you gold prices are going to be going much higher. As the saying goes. "A rising tide lifts all boats".

To find out more about Frontline Gold, check out their WEBSITE and reveiw all this for yourself.

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Three Hot Copper Stocks

Copper has been in a reall copper bull market this year with prices hitting just shy of $5.00 per pound. That is the highest price in over a decade and by the looks of things, it has the potential to go a lot higher yet. I was reading somewhere, I can't remember where exactly, but there are some analysts calling for another 50% rise in copper stocks prices in the next year or so. Taking this into mind it might be time to follow a few junior copper stocks plays that have some good upside potential.

One of the first copper juniors is Copper Fox Metals TSX-V: CUU. This company holds a diversified portfolio of copper assets which provide shareholders with investment exposure to projects at various stages of the copper stocks industry. With two of the most advanced projects, Schaft Creek and Van Dyke, the company has ownership of significant quantities of copper, gold, molybdenum and silver.

Schaft Creek is a property that is 56,180 hectares in size and is one of the largest undeveloped porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum-silver deposits in North Amercia, located in the Golden Traiangle of BC. A 2021 PEA valuation reports a resource producing 5.0 B lbs of copper, 3.7 M oz of gold, 226.0 M lbs of molybdenum and 16.4 M oz of silver over a 21 year mine life.

The Van Dyke project is a 100% interest consisting of 531.5 hectares of mineral rights and 5.75 hectares of surface rights, located approximately 145 kilometers east of Phoenix Arizona. A 2020 PEA significantly increased the valuation to an IRR of 43.4%, producing 1.1 B lbs of copper over a 17 year mine life.

The company has three exploration projects as well. The Sombrero Butte and the Mineral Mountain both located in Arizona. The Sombrero Butte is a porphyry copper project, comprised of 1,179 hectares located in the Bunker Hill Mining District east of Mammoth Arizona and the Mineral Mountain porphyry copper project, which is comprised of 1,751 hectares located in the Mineral Mountain Mining District east of Florence, Arizona. There is also the Eaglehead property covering 15,956 hectares in the Dease Lake region of BC>

The second copper junior worth a look is Kutcho Copper TSX-V:KC. This junior holds the Kutcho property which is located east of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia. This project consists of one mining lease and 46 mineral exploration claims covering an area of approximately 17,060 hectares. This is a high grade copper zinc development project with 22.8 millions tonnes in the Measured and Indicated Category at 2.26% CuEq which is just over 1.1 billion pounds of copper equivalent.

Kutcho Copper has infastructure close by and is supported by Capstone Mining and Wheaton Precious Metals as major shareholders with a financing package of C$100 million of which over C$34 million already invested. News in October 2021 stated the company had provided a final progress report on the feasibility study for its project. The open pit and underground mining plans have been finalised, and an integrated production schedule that focuses on processing highest grade material early in mine life has been developed. This project has a forecast of a 12 year mine life.

The third copper junior to look at is Kodiak Copper TSX-V:KDK. Kodiak has a couple of projects. The first is the MPD project located within the Quesnel Trough of BC. This is a 14,716 hectare land package that is 100% owned by the company. This is the same copper producing belt that hosts Teck's Highland Valley Mine, Imperial Metals Mount Polley Mine and Centerra's Mount Milligan Mine. There has been a lot of historic drilling on the property. One of the best intercepts so far is 535 meters of 0.49% copper and 0.29 g/t gold which includes 282 meters of 0.70% copper and 0.49 g/t gold 1.16% CuEq, including 45.7 m of 1.41% copper and 1.46 g/t gold 2.75% CuEq. Mineralization traced to date to 800 meters depth, across a width of 350 meters and 800 meters in length.

The second property Kodiak has is the Mojave property which is located in Arizona. This is a copper molybdenum silver porphyry project which also is 100% owned by the company. The land area is just over 10 Sq KM is size. There were a couple of historic mines that operated on this property in the 1950's and 1960's. These were the Wikieup Queen copper mine and the Scott Fault mine. In 2011, eleven core holes were drilled. Highlights of historical drill results include: 59.4 meters grading 0.49% Cu and 70.7 meters grading 0.3% Cu, 0.01% Mo, and 2.54 g/mt Ag.

There you have it. Three copper juniors that you can investigate and maybe even invest in if you are bullish on copper.

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Added note: The author of this article holds NO postions in ANY of the above companies listed above at the time of this writing. The author may buy or sell any time going forward.


World's First Carbon Negative Gold Royalty Platform

One of the biggest issues in the news these days besides covid is the environment and climate change. About a decade or so ago it was a global warming crisis which in turn changed to just climate change which led to words like CO2, Carbon emmisions, carbon neutral, carbon credits, the green new deal and the list goes on. So what does this all have to do with mining? Well firstly with what is happening at all these global climate summits is new legislation being brought forward and how it will effect industries around the world. Everyone sooner or later will have to kind of comply with these regulations in one way or another. Basically it's more legislation and taxes the way I see it. But it is what it is.

So what does all this have to do with junior mining companies? Well the one issue that stands out first and foremost is financing. Junior companies always need money for exploration and that money is usually harder to aquire due to the risk that exploration brings. A lot of these companies either go to public offerings for money or if able will get money from private placements. Private placement money is the better way to go as this money is from institutions or funds and a lot of funds tend to have a certain criteria for lending. This criteria could be things like the stock price has to be a certain price with X amount of earnings etc. etc. and what what is going to happen in the not to distant future will be companies looking to raise money will most likely have to have a green policy of some kind in place.

While looking for something along this line to invest in I came across a company that is involved in mining and has already gotten istself established in the green way via carbon credits. Star Royalties TSX-V:STRR is a precious metals and green royalty and streaming investment company. This company has created the world's first carbon negative gold royalty platform and offers investors gold exposure with an increasingly negative carbon footprint. For those not familiar with royalty or streams it goes like this. Royalties are tied to to a company's earnings or revenue where the royalty company gets a percentage of that revenue or earnings. Streams on the other hand are where the royalty company makes an initial payment, it is then given the right to purchase all or a predetermined amount or percentage of future metal production generated from a mining operation, at a predetermined below-market price.

So without getting into all the nitty gritty details about these royalties and streams, the company has percentages in several mining operations throughout the world. Here in Canada, Star Royalties has a 2% NSR Royalty, covering all 16,716 hectares of mining leases and mineral claims outlined in Gold Mountain. Elk Mountain is owned by Gold Mountain Mining TSX-V:GMTN. The Elk Mountain operation is in BC. The company has the Copperstone Gold stream in Arizona that slides from 9.9% down to 1.2% dependent on gold produced with Sabre Gold Mines Corp. TSX:SGLD.

In Australia, the company holds a 2% royalty on the Keysbrook Mine. This is an open pit operation that produces zircon and titanium. In Mongolia the company holds royalties from two companies that have yet to put mines in opertions. There is the Bayan Undur mine owned by Aranjin Resources which is a copper and silver deposit. The Baavhai Uul in Mongolia is a lithium brine project where Star Roylaties will receive 1.5% gross revenue. This prospect is one of Mongolia's largest exploration licenses being over 80,000 hectares.

When it comes ot carbon capture and carbon credits, the company has a 16% Gross Revenue Royalty on AurCrest Gold,s forest revenue share in Ontario and 13.5% gross revenue royalty on Elizabeth Metis Settlement's forest revenue which is in Alberta.

This kind of gives an overall look at Star Royalties. I'm a fan of royalty companies in general because of the limited risk in the junior mining space. In my mind I refer these to mini ETF's that if the price of commodities goes up the stocks in theory should do quite well. This stock being also getting involved in the green agenda should find itself in favour of a more wider audience of investors.

The company has 72 million shares and also has tradeable warrants.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.

Added note: The author of this article holds postions in the above company at the time of this writing. The author may buy or sell any time going forward.


Saskatchewan Uranium - Skyharbour Resources

One of the hottest uranium areas on the planet is in northern Saskatchewan. Pretty much anyone who is exploring, mining or has anything to do with uranium has a an interest of some kind in this area. Pretty much all the major players in uranium have full scale mines here. Northern Saskatchewan covers a massive area of land so it a natural place for small juniors to stake ground and explore.

There were quite a few juniors that were here during the last uranium boom but since uranium prices fell a lot of juniors drop their ground and move onto other resources however those juniors that have ground with potential stay put and keep on exploring. One such smaller company is Skyharbour Resources TSX-V:SYH. Skyharbour holds a substantial portfolio of uranium and thorium expedition prospects in the Athabasca Basin of Saksatchewan with 6 drill-ready projects over 240,000 hectares. Skyharbour has actually acquired from Denison Mines, a 100% interest in the Moore Uranium property which lies 15 kilometres east of Denison's Wheeler River property and 39 kilometres southern of Cameco's McArthur River uranium mine. Moore is an advanced-stage uranium expedition property high quality uranium mineralization at the Radical Zone with drill results returning as much as 6.0% U3O8 over 5.9 metres including 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5 metres at an upright deepness of 265 metres.

Skyharbour also has a joint-venture with Orano Canada. at the Preston Project whereby Orano has earned a 51% interest in the project through exploration expenditures and cash payments. Skyharbour owns a 24.5% interest in the Project. Skyharbour also has a joint-venture with Azincourt Energy at the East Preston Project whereby Azincourt has earned a 70% interest in the project through exploration expenditures, cash payments and share issuance. Skyharbour now owns a 15% interest in the Project. Preston and East Preston are large, geologically prospective properties proximal to Fission Uranium's Triple R deposit as well as NexGen Energy's Arrow deposit. Skyharbour also owns a 100% interest in the South Falcon Uranium Project on the eastern perimeter of the Basin which contains a NI 43-101 inferred resource totalling 7.0 million pounds of U3O8 at 0.03% and 5.3 million pounds of ThO2 at 0.023%.

The main property of interest at this time though is the Moore property which hosts high grade uranium mineralization at the Main Maverick Zone, which was discovered by JNR Resources in the early 2000's. The company has carried out diamond drill programs over the last few years with several drill holes intersecting high grade uranium mineralization along the 4.7 kilometre long Maverick structural corridor. Drill intercepts of high grade, shallow uranium include 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5m at 264m, 9.12% U3O8 over 1.4m at 278m and 5.29% over 2.5m U3O8 at 279m. Skyharbour's drill hole ML-199 tested the Main Maverick Zone lens and intersected high grade uranium mineralization containing 6.0% U3O8 over 5.9m at 265 metres depth including 20.8% U3O8 over 1.5m. Hole ML-202 from the Maverick East Zone intersected high grade uranium of 1.79% U3O8 over 11.5m at 270m including 4.17% U3O8 over 4.5m and 9.12% U3O8 over 1.4m.

Of particular interest are underlying basement feeder zones to the unconformity-hosted high grade uranium present along the Maverick corridor; these targets have seen limited historical drill testing. Only 3 kilometres of the total 4.7 kilometre long Maverick corridor has been systematically drill tested leaving robust discovery potential along strike as well as at depth in the underlying basement rocks which have seen limited drill testing historically.

The company also has the Preston property which is a large 49,635 hectare (122,651 acre) land position strategically located to the south of and adjacent to NexGen Energy's Rook 1 project host to the high grade Arrow deposit, and close to Fission Uranium's (TSX: FCU) Patterson Lake South project host to the high grade Triple R deposit. Skyharbour is advancing this project using a "Prospect Generator" model with a strategic partner funding exploration and making cash payments to Skyharbour.

The South Falcon Point Project has seen drilling of over 22,000 metres in more than 110 holes. Over $15 million has been invested in exploration consisting of airborne and ground geophysics, multi-phased diamond drill campaigns, detailed geochemical sampling and surveys, and ground-based prospecting culminating in an extensive geological database for the project area. The Yurchison Project consists of 11 claims totalling 54,184 ha in the Wollaston Domain of northern Saskatchewan. The northeastern half of this project contains numerous Pb-Zn-Ag showings.

Shyharbour also has a gold, silver property in the Red Lake district of Ontario. This property is owned 100% and consists of 1,780 acres of land around the past-producing Selco South Bay copper-zinc-silver mine. The South Bay property is located in the Dent, Mitchell, and Agnew Townships, 80 kilometres east-northeast of Red Lake in northwestern Ontario.

With uranium in a hot uptrend there could very well be a lot of upside in small juniors like Skyharbour. The 52 week high was reached at 87 cents just a while ago and the company has about 160 million fully diluted shares at the moment.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share. When seeking out mining stocks always use Due Diligence and see our Disclaimer and be sure to sign up for our free news letter located on the right hand side of this page.


Here's What's Happening In The Yukon

Gold mining in the Yukon has been on going for over 100 years. Ever since the Klondike Gold Rush, the territory has seen some kind of mining or exploration project. Even in years where when gold prices were down, placer operations would still be active during the short summer mining season. However, when it comes to large commerical mining operations there is only one large mining operation going on in the yukon and that mine is Capstone Mining's CS Minto Mine, which is a large copper operation that employs around 300 people and runs about 4000 tons of ore per day. This mine however has only a few more years of production before it's ore is depleted.

The exploration and development scene however paints a totally different picture as with all the news announcements that have been coming out over the past year. Some of the very large exploration projects have seen buyouts while others are seeing joint ventures with major companies. The first big news announcement came in the summer of 2016 when Kaminak announced that Goldcorp G
was buying them out. Goldcorp took over Kaminak's main asset is the Coffee Gold project south of Dawson City. Kaminak says the 10-year project would generate more than $2 billion in gross revenues, and employ close to 500 people. Goldcorp acquired all the outstanding shares of Kaminak for about $520 million.

In late 2016 news came out stating that Agnico Eagle Mines had purchased nearly 20 per cent of the shares of G4G Capital Corp. which is White Gold Corp. WGO for $14.5 million. This White Gold project is one of Shawn Ryans projects located outside of Dawson City.

In early spring of 2017 Atac Resources ATC made an announcement that Barrick Gold can acquire an interest in the central portion of Atac's Rackla Gold Property Orion Project and make an $8.3 million investment in Atac. Under the terms of the property earn-in agreement Barrick can acquire up to a 70% interest in the Orion Project. The transactions consist of a potential total investment by Barrick of approximately $63.3 million, which includes a private placement of $8.3 million and a two staged, $55 million exploration earn-in option to acquire up to 70% of the Orion Project. Just last week a Yukon Environmental division, YESAB granted the company to pursue with an 80 KM road to this property. This property is located north east of Mayo.

In March of 2017, junior miner Goldstike Resources GSR made news when it stated that it had entered into a strategic alliance with Newmont Mining Corporation. Newmont agreed to purchase 12,705,715 units of Goldstrike by way of non-brokered private placement at the price of C$0.4742 per unit, for an aggregate cost of US$4,500,000 and pursuant to which Goldstrike has agreed to grant to Newmont the right to earn a 51% interest in Goldstrike's Plateau project.

Now of course here are other notable projects on the go in the Yukon that haven't been joint ventured as of yet. One in particular is Victoria Gold's VIT Dublin Gultch project norther east of Mayo. This project hosts the Eagle gold deposit, the Wolf tungsten deposit and a 13 km-long belt of Au and Ag mineralization known as the Potato Hills Trend. They have also identified new gold and silver targets along this same trend. The Eagle Gold project willend up being the largest goldmine in Yukon history. The project will employ 350-400 people and will be a significant economic contributor to Yukon.

To the west of the territory, there is still another large project that is going through various approval and environment stages. This is the Western Coppers WRN
Casino project. This could very well become on the largest copper mines on the planet. Western Copper owns this deposit 100% and it's a huge deposit. 965 Million Tonnes mill ore + 157 Million tonnes heap leach (Proven + Probable) 4.5 Billion lbs Copper 8.9 Million oz Gold.

Another project that deserves a close look is Golden Predator Mining GPY. This junior has the 3 Aces project that is a high-grade gold project, discovered in 2009, located in southeast Yukon. In a 2016 field program focused on gold-in-soil anomalies the company has identified more than 25 new vein discoveries with assays in excess of 10 g/t gold. The company also has the Brewery Creek mine which has a mine life of 9 years with seasonal mining and crushing scheduled for 230 days per year at 7,500 tonnes per day and year round leaching. The Brewery Creek mine is located close to Dawson City.

Rockhaven Resources RK is another small junior that has a project on the go. The company is proving up it's Klasa Gold Silver Deposit in central Yukon. This project is 100% owned and has 1.36 million ounces of gold at 4.48 g/t and 26 million ounces of silver at 89 g/t in the inferred mineral resource category and this deposit is right close to the old Mount Nansen mine. The Mount Nansen Mine was one of the richest gold and silver deposits in the Yukon grading
446,549 tonnes @ 17g/t Au equivalent.

So for anyone who is interested in investing in a Yukon plays, the list of juniors above is just a short list of those companies that are in the news and will most likely be in the news for a few more years. Of course one has to remember that the Yukon is a big area and you never know what will be found this year.

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A Junior With It's Focus On Copper

Metal prices both precious and base have been pretty dismal the past few years. Aside from palladium going to the moon price wise in the precious metal side, the only other metal that has had any shine is copper. This is mainly due to the fact that there could very well be a massive shortage of copper in years to come. This shortage is mainly derived from countries around the world that are going more green with both electric cars and electric transportation in general, and it is widely projected that global demand for refined copper will out pace production and the market will be in deficit over the next few years.

You see, getting off fossil fuels and going electric like so many places around the world want to do, takes a whack of other ingredients like lithium and cobalt but mostly copper, and when you look into the actual manufacturing of electric cars and their batteries and other components, you end up using a lot of copper. Todays cars use something like 55 pounds of copper whereas electric cars are projected to use about 165 pound of copper. So when you think that it takes something like a decade or even more to get an actual mine up and running, now is probably a good time to be out exploring for a nice size copper deposit. And that is what this junior we're going to look at is doing.

The junior I'm talking about today is a small explorer called Universal Copper UNV. They just started trading under the new symbol, UNV on the venture exchange in the last week. This company use to be Tasca Resources and Tasca had a couple of projects on the go in British Columbia. The company CEO is Clive Massey who brings extensive experience in running public companies and most importantly, junior mining companies.

Universal Copper has a 100% interest in the Princeton Property in southern BC. This is a gold project which is close to the property that Westhaven Resources is working on. For anyone who has been following Westhaven in the last while you know all to well what good gold grades can do for an investor.

Universal Copper also has the Poplar project in north west BC. This property has a historic 43-101 reoprts and is one of the most pre-production deposits in BC at this time. The property has seen historical diamond drilling totaling 39,648 meters in 147 holes plus and additional 135 diamond and percussion holes totaling 6,817 meters.

One of the reasons for the name change is that the company wants to be focused only on copper and in doing so the company just aquired some prime copper exploration property in Colombia South America. This property situated in an area called the Gachala copper belt which is an under explored 250km by 120km sedimentary belt that is located within the Colombia copper belt that is all part of the Andean copper belt and being sedimentary, it is similar to what you would find in the Democratic Republic Of Congo or DNC which is well known for it's rich copper deposits. The Gachala portion of the Andean copper belt is known to have over 300 mineral occurances alone.

Universal Copper has a 48 KM section of this Galchala copper belt to explore. Historical sampling had samples returning values from 1.6% to 7.82% Cu on ground
contiguous to the Universal Copper properties. The company plans to go forward with an exploration program that could include Long Wave Infrared Imaging along with mapping, sampling and trenching to define future drill targets.

The company also has plans for it's Poplar project in north west BC. This property has nine prospective target areas to follow up on that were identified after airborne magnetics along with drill results from earlier this year as you can view below.

This year could prove out to be an exciting year for Universal Copper with these two copper projects. The company has a very tight share structure of of only 25,972,271 shares O/S at this time. The stock over the past 52 weeks has seen a high of 26 cents and a low of 6 cents.

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Is The Zinc Run Over With?

It seems that most people who are interested and follow the metals tend to follow gold and silver the most. So when we are following these two commodities we tend to loose track or maybe even ignore the other metals. When it comes to keeping an eye on base metals however most tend to focus or track the price of copper. The reasoning for copper being tracked and followed so close is that copper is like a barometer for the global economy. However by staying focused on just a few metals, traders or investors can really miss out on what is really happening out there.

Of all the base metals out there zinc is one of the most common and of course seems to be in abundance everywhere. Zinc itself as a commodity is used in almost all manufacturing to some degree. It is used a lot in galvanizing of metals to protect these metals from rusting and corrosion. Zinc is not really a glamour commodity and doesn't dazzel people like gold and silver. Drilling campaigns by different miners don't seem to get the same investor attention as say gold. However, while everyone has been following the precious metal price over the last year or so, zinc has been on a real tear. I stumbled onto an article taking about a zinc shortage and then took a look at the zinc price and was quite shocked at how zinc has performed this year.

Taking a look at a five year chart of zinc we can see that in January of 2016 the price was roughly 70 cents per pound. Today that price is close to $1.30 cents a pound which is almost a doubling of the zinc price in almost a year. This got me to wondering if this price increase was just a speculation on zinc or if the price has risen due to an actual shortage of the commodity. After taking a look at a five year warehouse storage amount on hand like the chart below shows, you can see that there actually is a real shortage of zinc on the world markets.

After seeing these charts and how the zinc has risen in price almost 100% this year I started to wonder if any of the zinc juniors has followed the same route. The first one that comes to my mind always is Canadian Zinc CZN. Canadain Zinc owns the Prairie Creek mine in the NWT of Canada. There stock price has gone from 8 cents in January to a high of 40 cents in July. The stock has a price today of around 25 cents. Still a very nice run up.

The second junior with a large focus on zinc is Tinka Resources TK. Tinka has a large zinc and silver project it is exploring in Peru. The deposit they are looking to define more indepth has an inferred mineral resources estimated to be around 18.8 million tonnes grading 8.2% Zinc equivalent. Tinka has a 9 cent low and about a 25 cent high and sits close to high today.

Of course if you want to invest in a zinc major you can always buy stock in Hudbay Minerals HBM. Hudbay has several mining operations throughout North America and Peru. Of course they are not just zinc specific as zinc is a very common mineral found in almost any VMS deposits and anywhere copper-gold-silver is found also. Hudbay stock has run from around $2.50 to almost $10 today giving investors a nice 400% return so far this year.

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Six Palladium Stocks To Keep On Watch

Since late summer of 2019, the price of palladium has rallied from the $1,500 area to almost $2,800. That's close to an 80% rally in about 6 months time. A few of the reasons for this price explosion is that most of the palladium in the world comes from Russia and South Africa. With trade sanctions on Russia imposed, industry ends up buying from South Africa but that country is seeing droughts and water shortages which in turn wreak havoc on the hydro situation and with power outages happening, the country ends up seeing a lot of it's mines being shuttered or working at partial capacities.

The second reason for the rally in palladium price of course is the extra global demand for the metal due to the increase in hybrid cars, which use this metal to control pollution. This is happening all at the same time governments are imposing tougher regulations on carbon emissions. So it's the classic increased demand plus decreased product which equals price explosion.

A third reason could also be the price of rhodium is getting to a point where an alternative needs to be found. I wrote an article back in September of 2019 about sky high rhodium prices when the price was $4,000 an oz. Today that price has reached $12,000 and ounce and palladium is keeping in line.

As far as investing in palladium goes, you can buy the metal itself from various bullion dealers like Kitco and so on. Aside from investing in the metal itself and paying the huge premiums though, there are a few mining comapnies that do explore and mine for palladium that you could look at investing in.

Palladium One Mining Inc. (TSXV:PDM) which was formerly known as Nickle One, has properties in Canada and Finland. It holds interests in the Lantinen Koillismaa project in north-central Finland and in August 2019 the company acquired the Tyko property located in Ontario, Canada.

New Age Metals Inc. (TSXV:NAM) New Age has interests in the River Valley PGE project located in Ontario and the Genesis PGE/polymetallic project located in south central Alaska. The company also has interests in lithium properties.

Grid Metals Corp. (TSXV:GRDM) has interests in the East Bull Lake, a platinum group metals-nickel-copper exploration project, as well as Bannockburn nickel property located in the Sudbury Mining Division, Ontario. The company also has the he Makwa Mayville Project located in the Bird River Greenstone Belt approximately 145 km from Winnipeg Manitoba. The project consists of two open pit NI 43-101 resources containing nickel copper platinum group metals and cobalt mineralization.

Group Ten Metals Inc. (TSXV:PGE) has the STILLWATER WEST PROJECT where it owns a 100% interest on a large 54 km2 claim block that adjoins the producing J-M Reef PGE deposit. This is the area where still Stillwater Mining is located and this area has some of the highest-grade major PGE deposit in the world and the largest outside of South Africa and Russia. The company also owns the Kluane Project in the Burwash Yukon area. This project has one of the largest undeveloped PGE-Ni-Cu projects in North America at 6 Moz of Pt+Pd+Au and 3 Blbs of Ni+Cu in M&I resources and an additional 2 Moz of Pt+Pd+Au and 1 Blbs of Ni+Cu in Inferred resources.

Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (TSX:PTM) has operations in South Africa and is focused on the production at the Maseve Mine, and the exploration and the Waterberg platinum deposit. The Waterberg Project is a bulk underground deposit in northern South Africa. The deposit was discovered by the Company and has the potential to be a low-cost producer of palladium, platinum, rhodium and gold.

Generation Mining (TSXV:GENM) Generation Mining owns a 51% interest (with an option to earn up to an 80% interest) in the Marathon PGM deposit located near Marathon, Ontario.

So the big question is will palladium continue to go up in price like rhodium for instance? Rhodium today sits between $10 - 12,000 per ounce. Some market watchers say yes. There are market forcasters who see $5,000 before 2025 and there are probably commodity traders who are also calculating the future price also now that issues like the Coronavirus is starting to put hickups in supply chains. Palladium could become a lot more expensive unless a junior mining company can somehow find and develope a deposit to fill that supply gap. But with 10 year construction build times on any mine today, most see the price continue to go up.

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Silver Prices Are Set To Soar

There has been a lot of talk and chatter on the net the last few weeks in the silver camp about the price of silver being primed to take off. There has been some pretty interesting articles in the last little while that tell you the reasons why silver is heading higher. Of course there is also a bear camp that has all the stats that can show all the reasons why silver won't go up any time soon also. But for conversations sake we will stick with the silver bull camp and look at the reasons why it is about to explode.

The first article I read was quite interesting as it explains that there is only a certain amount of value in the worlds economy and its all about how that value is invested. The author uses a method called fractals to measure and analyse everything using time and valuation. With this data the author goes onto say that the value of equities like big stocks have gotten to an over valued point. Realestate in most cases is over valued. Almost every tangible item of value is overvalued at the present time except oil, precious and base metals. Oil might be undervalued but as he explains there is just too many factors that could push oil down again. Factors like Iran or Saudia that could dump millions if not billions of barrels of oil out on whim driving the prices down just to elimenate competition.

With base metals there is also too much uncertainty in the world economy as far as expansion goes so things like copper or base metals are questionable. All this leads to the precious metals like gold and silver. The reasoning for silver is because it is the cheapest out there. Silver is like picking a penny stock. It's only human to pick through and look for the bargains. Our thinking tends to tell us that if we buy a 2 cent stock, we only need a 2 cent rise to 4 cents to double our money. So it is the same mentality that would say that silver being only $15-$16 per oz that it only needs to go to $30-$32 for me to double my money. Whereas with gold it would need to break a new high and need to get beyond $2,400 an oz for a double.

Another person Bo Polny who uses cycles and time to analyse trends and commodities is basically saying the same thing. His call is for triple digit silver this year in 2016. Of course we read lots of articles stating that certain banks have hoarded all the physical silver there is. This is the explaination that a lot of silver stackers use pointing to the fact that bothgovernment and private mints have run out of physical silver for minting but yet the paper silver price remains the same or even goes down. Of course the entire gold or silver market is the smallest markets on the planet money wise so it would not take much for any one nation or even a large corporation to actually take over the complete market if they could actually get their hands on all the material.

All the gold and silver that is traded, is just paper. There is something like 100 oz of paper silver or gold for every physical oz of metal so the day may come when some unlucky people find that silver they supposedly own is not worth the PAPER it is written on. Either way going by these writers this past week it should be an interesting time coming up if any of this stuff actually transpires. I've read lots of these theories over the years and I have developed an "I'll wait and see" attitude. But as a gold and silver bug I have always said that owning a bit of either is a great way to hold some money as a saving. And while I'm talking silver here, make sure you sign up for my newsletter. The form is on the top right hand side of this page and your email goes into the draw for a 1/4 oz silver coin.

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Silver Miners To Watch In 2018

Welcome to 2018. Some analysts are saying that this year is the year for gold. But there are a few other market watchers who are saying forget gold and watch silver, or better yet, buy silver. Be it physical bullion, silver ETF's or silver mining stocks. There are guys out there who are touting we will see $400+ silver price this year. I know it sounds far fetched and even though I think that a $400 call is out in left field, the fact is, silver is not only the smallest market in the world but also the most undervalued commodity in the world right now. And looking at all the scenarios silver is primed to explode up.

One of the first things most people wonder about is why the price of silver hardly ever gets above $20 per ounce. For starters most of the silver that is actually traded is so called paper silver on the futures and very few actually take delivery of the silver. According to the data put out by the 2017 World Silver Survey, total paper trading silver volume on the world's exchanges was 159,000 Moz, or 159 billion oz in 2016. So actually the exchanges traded 180 times more paper silver in 2016 than the global mine supply of 886 Moz. According to the data in the recently released 2017 World Silver Survey, total physical silver investment for 2016 came in at a whopping $4.4 billion:

Global Silver Investment 2016 (in million oz - Moz):

Basically what is happening is that the current system of paper trading and derivative betting will come to and end as someone, somewhere will require a lot of actual physical silver and won't settle for cash pay outs. In large quantities that will set the price of silver ablaze as silver is being used more and more everyday in technology, medicines etc. and there just isn't that much silver to be had. Infact many reports state that the current inventory of physical silver is running a deficit compared to mine out out.

So aside from investing in physical silver the next option and it can be one of the best options because it many cases miners can give you extreme leverage to the price of gold is to just buy stocks in a pure silver miner. A lot of silver that is mined today comes as a by product of gold and copper mines so finding a pure silver miner is what you want to look into buying. Following that you will want to narrow your search down to miners who are active in countries that have good mining politics and of course are known for high quality silver in the ground. Thirdly narrow your search to companies that already have proven ore deposits are those deposits are either already being exploited or are shovel ready.

Look for companies that have a low amount of shares out standing and where insiders or institutions hold a good percentage of the shares already. Companies with minimal debt and cash in the bank are also a real bonus. Make sure the company has not only proven resource but that the resource is economical to mine and that the company could produce silver for a decade or longer. The more resource the more value the company will have as the silver price goes up. Some companies with good proven resources will get bought out and usually at a premium price to what the stock is trading are presently.

Here is a short list of silver juniors that are well worth a look if you are thinking about buying into a silver miner this year.

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Red Hot Silver Stocks

Being a gold bug has been great the last little while. The only thing better has been being a silver bug. Whether you own silver bullion, silver ETF's, silver stocks or silver trusts, that $20 dollar price tag has brought tears of joy to all those of us whove been long silver. But most important for silver bugs was news today July 20, 2020 that Sprott Silver Trust has just filed to raise $1.5 billion to purchase physical silver, which is a jaw-dropping 8.8% of annual global production.

Back in May I wrote about a silver explorer in MW Mexico that was going to be drilling what some said was a high grade silver camp. The company Vizsla Resources TSX-V: VZLA at that time was around 50 cents. It didn't take too long to get some cores back and within a months time the stock had topped out just shy of $3.00. That's a nice run giving investors a 500% return. The stock today has back off a bit but is still in the mid $2.50 range as shareholders wait for the next batch of assays.

Right next door to them is GR Silver TSX-V:GRSL and they also have been scoring some pretty nice grades. Infact today, July 20, 2020 they issued news of 5.4 m of 1,112 g/t AgEq at Plomosas. A couple weeks ago assays showed 2.7 m of 1,723 g/t AgEq at Plomosas. Last month First Majestic TSX:FR bought into a financing of 4 million units.

Now of course once people see this sort of thing happening with stock price going ballistic, they naturally want to find something in the immediate area that might be a bit cheaper. After all that is what I would do. So with a bit of investigating and searching I stumbled onto a smaller unknown start up that has property stuck right in between GR Silver's operation and and Vizsla's ground. That company is Brigadier Gold TSX-V: BRG. Recent news is that they have an option to acquire a 100-per-cent interest in the San Agustin mine which is located within the 3,954-hectare Picachos gold-silver property, centred over the historic Viva Zapata national mineral reserve, Sinaloa, Mexico.

Primary targets include under-explored gold veins within the historic San Augstin mine and La Gloria, a historic mine with rock samples containing 21.1 g/t Au and 6 g/t Ag across 0.8m. MCA (concession owners) produced about 1850 tonnes of muck from a shaft 12m long, 1.5 m wide and 45 m deep at the end of the main level. Values from the bottom of this shaft were 185 g/t Au.At the moment the company is arranging a private placement for 3.5 million dollars. Proceeds should be used for exploration. Once the PP closes investors should be getting news on the company's plans going forward.

Heading north now into Nevada most explorers are on the hunt for gold. However there are juniors that are into the silver in a big way. Silver One TSX-V:SVE has been in rally mode the last week or so. The company did a live webinar a while back and probably got investor attention. This company holds an option to acquire a 100%-interest in its flagship project which is the past-producing Candelaria Mine. Estimated production from the late 1880's to 1954 was 22 million ounces of silver. From 1874 to 1883, the Northern Belle Deposit alone produced high grade lodes averaging 1,700 - 2,000 g/t (50 - 60 oz/t) silver. Open pit mining between 1980 and 1999 resulted in the production of 47 million ounces of silver, with Kinross Gold producing approximately 13 million ounces of that between 1994 and 1999.

Silver One also has the Phoenix Silver Project is located within the "Arizona Silver Belt", which occurs on the margins of the prolific copper producing area near Globe, Arizona along with the Cherroke property in Nevada and a property in Sonaora Mexico.

Looking forward, silver is undervalued compared to gold being still around 100:1 ratio. If silver is to equalize to around even 50:1 like maybe silver watchers claim, things could get very exciting for those who hold silver and silver shares.

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Added note: The author of this article holds postions in all the above at the time of this writing. The author may buy or sell any time going forward.

Sky High Rhodium

Most metal bulls will be able to tell you the price of gold or silver off the top of their heads on almost any given day. However if you asked them what the price of any of the base metals or the white metals were they would most likely be stumped for an answer. That's because most metal bulls don't seem to keep track of the platinum group metals and so by the time a person actually notices the rise in price of one of these metals. it's usually a bit late to get participate in the action anyways.

When it comes to rhodium though most people have never heard of it however it is a very valuable and extremely rare metal and right now the price of rhodium is going through the roof. The auto sector is the biggest user of rhodium. This metal is a critical in automobile catalytic converters which are used to reduce harmful exhaust emissions and with higher standards being imposed by governments from around the world, the demand will only become greater. Although palladium is predominately used in gasoline engines and platinum is used in diesel vehicles, but rhodium is needed for both diesel and gas engines.

Rhodium increased 1,840 USD/t oz. or 74.80% since the beginning of 2019, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity. The metal has seen extreme volatility over the years. Rhodium had a record low of just $200 in January of 1997 but reached an all time high of $10,100 in June of 2008. Today the price is sitting at $4,500 per ounce and some analysts expect the price to go back to $10,000 or even higher.

There are no particular miners that mine rhodium as the metal is found in platinum or nickel ores together with the other members of the platinum group metals. The industrial extraction of rhodium is complex because the ores are mixed with other metals such as palladium, silver, platinum, and gold and there are very few rhodium-bearing minerals. It is found in platinum ores and extracted as a white inert metal that is difficult to fuse. Principal sources are located in South Africa and in North America, including the copper-nickel sulfide mining area of the Sudbury, Ontario, region. Although the quantity at Sudbury is very small, the large amount of processed nickel ore makes rhodium recovery cost-effective.

For those who wish to buy rhodium in physical form, you can buy from places like Kitco and specialty smelting operations. For those who would like to trade rhodium there is very few options. There is the Xtrackers Physical Rhodium ETC and also the Deutsche Bank db Physical Rhodium ETC. Neither of these funds trade in the USA or Canada though. Both are traded on European markets in London.

You could however buy stock in a platinum or palladium miner whose metal has a higher degree of rhodium in it's ore composition.

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The Rise Of Nickel

Most of us gold and metal buffs tend to follow the precious metal scene and aside from taking a glance a copper once in a while we seem to ignore what's going on with the base metals. For the past year a lot of analysts have been following cobalt and lithium but at the same time nickel has almost doubled and very few had even noticed. If you have a junior mining stock that has exposure to nickel you may have seen a bit of a bounce or slight increase but all in all the gains in nickel have not reflected it's self in the stocks. Some of the stocks that have seen price gain of course is Alcoa and Excelsior Mining.

Two stocks that have a nickel exposure that I follow are Royal Nickel TSX:V-RNX and of course good old Sherritt TSX-S. Royal Nickels principal assets are the producing Beta Hunt gold and nickel mine in Western Australia, a 50% stake in the nickel joint venture that holds the Dumont Nickel Project in the Abitibi region of Quebec, anda 30% stake in the producing Reed Mine in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake region of Manitoba, Canada.

Another explorer that is focused on nickel is North American Nickel TSX-V: NAN. North American Nickels main project is the Maniitsoq property in Greenland and the Post Creek and Halcyon projects in Ontario.

So why is nickel taking of in price while precious metals are sitting dormant? One of the larger reasons is of course USA and Russia embargoes and sanctions. Norlisk which is the Russia's largest nickel miner is also one of the worlds largest nickel producers and when sanctions went into effect that of course has an effect on availability of the product.

Also last year Indonesia put an export ban on nickel that was produced in the country and added to extra pressure on the supply side. Indonesia wanted to see more nickel being refined and smelted in it's own country instead of being shipped out to other countries.

Last but not least, the new electric cars not only use lithium and cobalt but there is also a lot of nickel that is used in these automobiles. Nickel sulfide deposits are used to make nickel metal as well as nickel sulfate. The latter salt, nickel sulfate, is what's used primarily for electroplating and lithium-ion cathode material, and less than 10% of nickel supply is in sulfate form. As more and more cars become electric there will be more of a demand for nickel especially the nickel sulfate and less than 10% of this nickel is in sulfate form and even less is suitable for batteries.

The way the gold and silver market is going, maybe it's time to look at nickel as a wealth creator.

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While a lot of eyes have been watching the gold price rise lately, it seems few people are watching some of the other metals. Base metals like zinc and copper have both been rising over the past few months but few have noticed the rise in palladium.

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What's Happening In Northern BC

I get the odd email once in awhile from readers of the site asking what's happening in northern BC. Now of course since we had a sort of failed election where the government will be a minority type of government run by the NDP and helped along by the greens, there is even more questions asked as to how things will play out in regards to exploration in the junior mining sectors. From talking to a few people who seem to be in the know, what I'm hearing is some mining companies are a bit nervous due to uncertainty and some companies from what I've been told have reduced their exploration budgets in the province for while and are in the wait and see mode. But if you've got a project that has millions in the ground, you're not going to walk away from it and besides all governments need money so even though there might be a lull in activity for a while, money will move back in the area eventually.

Getting back to what's happening here though. In Atlin aside from placer operations on the go, African Queen AQ is sampling and doing some ground geophysics along with an aerial survey. They issued a news release stating that a diamond drill program of up to 2000 m to test the area below the existing Yellowjacket pit as well as a few other targets. This project is just 10KM or so outside of the town of Atlin. Also a bit further out of town Gray Rock GRK is doing some exploratory work in the Otter Creek area and from a mid June news release, the company has acquired 11 mineral claims in the Dease Lake region covering a total area of 3,634.4383 hectares. This area is known for it's copper gold showings.

Another area explorer is Brixton Metals BBB. Brixton has a property called the Thorn property which is about 100KM south of Atlin. Total drilling to date is 22,927 meters within 164 holes property wide. This also includes past owner drilling. Brixton also has a property closer to Atlin called the LD property. Several of the creeks crossing Brixtons claims have seen historic placer production up to 44,109 oz Au on McKee Creek. Highlights from the work on the LD property includes 330 g/t Au (bulk sample), 1615 g/t Au (rock sample) and 3m of 9.39 g/t Au (drill core).

Closer to where Brixton's Thorn property is, Doubleview Capital DBV has their Hat copper project. This project is comprised of 4,655 hectares in ten mineral tenures. Further south of Dease Lake the company also has the Red Spring property which has a historic non NI43-101 compliant resource of 5,000,000 tons grading 0.5% copper and 11.9 grams/ton silver (4,500,000 tonnes of 0.5% copper and 0.38 troy oz/tonne silver, which equates to 49.6 million pounds of Copper and 1.71 million Oz Silver ).

When it comes to market excitement though, you can't beat GT Gold GTT. GT Gold has drilled out some very nice high grades like 10.67 m of 13.03 g/t gold including 41.60 g/t Au & 144 g/t Ag over 1.52 metres on their Saddle project located between Iskut and Tatogga.

Getting further south and closer to Stewart BC is American Creek AMK with their Electrum property. The Electrum Property has a rich history with some of the highest grade ore hand-mined in North America with average grades of 1,661 grams of gold per tonne and 2,596 grams of silver per tonne. This project is in the same area as Pretium Resources PVG which has just put it's Brucejack property into production.

About 15 KM away from Stewart, IDM Mining IDM has the Red Mountain project inside the triangle. This project is currently in the Environmental Assessment Process. Just a week ago the company issued news stating they had drilled 14 m of 10.65 g/t Au at Red Mountain.

Teuton Resources TUO started a drill campaign at it's Treaty Creek property which is located in the same vicinity as Pretium and Seabridge. American Creek Resources holds a 20% interest in this property also.

Getting away from metals for a bit, Electra Stone ELT is in the business of mining jade in the Dease Lake region. Jade being called the new green gold due to it's appeal to Asian buyers is becoming a highy sought after commodity. Some of the highest grades of nepherite jade in the world are supposedly mined in the Dease Lake region. There are a few other private jade mining operations but Electra Stone is one of the first public jade miners in this region.

On the more eastern side of the province, Canadian Zinc Metals CZX has the Akie claims that consist of 46 contiguous mineral claims and covers about 116 square kilometres. The property has an NI 43-101 compliant Cardiac Creek deposit with a revised resource estimate which consists of an indicated category of an indicated resource of 19.6 million tonnes grading 8.2% zinc, 1.6% lead and 13.6 g/t silver (at a 5% zinc cut-off grade) and an inferred resource of 8.1 million tonnes grading 6.8% zinc, 1.2% lead and 11.2 g/t silver (at a 5% zinc cut-off grade).

Aben Resources ABN has the Forrest Kerr project which is located in the golden triangle and has Pretium (Brucejack), Nova gold Galore Creek, Seabridge gold KSM and Imperial Metals Red Chris surrounding it. The property is 23,000 hectares and past drilling has returned some impressive grades to date such as 9.867 g/t Au over29.3m, 33.4 g/t Au over 11m and 01.0 g/t Au over 1.95m and 137.8 g/t Au over 0.85m.

Also inside the triangle is Metallis Resources MTS which owns the Kirkham property, stated in February 2017, the company was planning to drill a couple of holes.

That's a quick breif overview of what is happening now. I know for certain that there are other projects that I have missed out on and if you're involved in a project that I didn't mention, let me know so I can update.

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