Speaker 1The following interview is sponsored by Phoenix Metals. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decision. This is the Commodity Culture Podcast, where we interview prominent investors, fund managers, analysts, and company CEOs to give you an edge when it comes to investing in the commodity space. Hello, everybody, and welcome into Commodity Culture. My name is Jesse Day. Today is August 31st, 2026, and my guest is the CEO of Phoenix Metals, a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on the exploration and development of gold-copper deposits in South Central British Columbia. It's Nick Campbell. We're going to talk about gold. We're going to talk about copper. We're going to talk about the company. It's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 2Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1Let's start with gold here, because we're currently sitting around $4,400 after bottoming around $4,000 last month. I'm wondering, from your perspective, what are the main trends you're watching that you think investors and stackers should be focused on in the gold market?
Speaker 2There's a difference between short-term and the long-term drivers for gold. Part of the reason why I'm in the seat that I'm in is because I'm not a gold bug. I've never been a gold bug, but I have been in the gold. I've been in the gold business my whole career, but I'm a big believer in the long-term value of gold. The primary reason for that, it's related to the U.S. dollar debasement trade, but it's really about there's too much exposure to the U.S. dollar in the world, and there's no good alternative to the U.S. dollar. There's no good alternative to the U.S. dollar. dollar. And it becomes an issue of how do you diversify away from something that is so big and so liquid, and there's really no other currency that can step in and perform the same role. And so I'm not the kind of person who goes out and says that the U.S. is going to lose its reserve status. It's not anytime soon. It's going to be the main reserve currency for quite some time. But I do think, and you've started to see this happen over the last few years, where you've started to see a push to diversify away from the U.S. dollar. And the thing that first was the catalyst for that was when Russia went into Ukraine, and then you saw the weaponization of the U.S. dollar, of all of Russia's U.S. dollar-held reserves. And so since that point in time, there's been a long push into gold that really went back to last cycle, where you saw central banks were starting to accumulate gold. But that really accelerated the central bank buying into gold. And that was really a way for nations to reduce their exposure to the U.S. gold. If they ever got on the wrong side of the U.S. in some kind of conflict, could be an economic conflict, could be a hot war, they need to have reserves that they can use to bolster their own financial defenses. And so that was a big part of that. That was a big driver of it. And since then, since that started, obviously there's been some big changes in the way the world views the U.S. as a trading partner. I mean, I'm Canadian. I live in Canada. Obviously, there's some conflict between Canada and the U.S. right now in terms of as a trading relationship. But Liberation Day last year was something that was a global phenomenon. It was something where really there's a lot of countries that have been, that rely on the U.S. economy. It's a great economy. It's a fantastic economy. You want to have exposure to it. And all of a sudden, it created, there was some bit of a need for there to be some diversification away from the U.S. and to start developing other relationships with other countries. And then there's the work away from globalization, the de-globalization trade, which is also going to make every country a little more insular. So that, on the backdrop of that, I think there's a long-term trend that is supportive of gold, right? And gold is different than every other currency because it's not political, because it's not controlled by a government. The price of gold can go way higher. It can go, quite frankly, it can go up another five times. And it's not going to change how your prices are, like the cost for your consumers. It's not going to change the competitive landscape for any country. And that, you know, if your currency goes up, it makes it, it may mean that you can go and buy things in other countries more, but it also makes your products more expensive to everybody else, right? So gold can go up. It doesn't really affect anything. It affects the value of deposits. It affects the value of countries that have lots of gold in the ground and gold reserves. But it doesn't really change the competitive landscape for any of the businesses that are operating that. So it is a currency that can be, and actually last, July, it was not this July, but the year before, gold was, the way that gold is treated as a financial institution, it now is traded as a currency rather. It was traded as an investment. So that's a completely different way of looking at gold as a holding. It allows you to use that as part of your leverage if you're a bank. It's a very big deal to be treated as a currency versus being treated as an investment. So I think all those things together, to me, create the backdrop. Potentially supporting substantially higher prices for gold. That's a long-term view that I have. And I think the things that are going to affect that in the near term, one is we're going into the U.S. midterm elections. I think there's likely going to be a lot of focus on that. And I think there'll probably be some level of social disruption in the U.S. around those midterms and leading afterwards. In the aftermath of the midterms, I think there's going to be a lot of focus on that. In the midterms, what happens, you know, I think there's likelihood for there to be some social disruption associated with that and continued economic disruption related to trade policy and potentially active engagement in the world from a military perspective. So I think those things are going to be – and in the short term, it might actually drive up the value of the U.S. dollar. It might actually – it might hurt the price of gold, right? So you see that with Iran. Iran is part of the – I talk about the random walk a lot. It's an economic theory. It's something that you can't predict, right? So Iran to me was a – I had no inclination that the U.S. was going to go into Iran at this time last year. Zero. Zero idea that that was going to happen. And then it happened and it really stopped the gold price rally that's tracked when it happened. And it drew attention to the U.S. The U.S. is an energy self-sufficient place. It's one of the few energy self-sufficient places. It's one of the few self-sufficient places in the world. Europe isn't self-sufficient. They need money. They need oil from the Gulf. Asia needs oil from the Gulf. They're way more exposed to a conflict in the Middle East than the U.S. is, quite frankly. And it's become very apparent over the course of the last six months about how important the U.S. economy is because that's where most of the investment is going on the A.I. side. There's still lots of investment outside of the U.S. and A.I. But it's a lot of investment outside of the U.S. and A.I. It's more insulated from this conflict than Iran is, even though it has raised prices in the U.S. It's reached prices all over the world. It's just felt a lot heavier in Europe and in Asia than it is in the U.S. So I think that's a driver that's going to happen. There's also $8 trillion of debt that's going to be financed in the next six months. That is a huge number. And a lot of that's getting short-term debts. It's getting refinanced. Now the U.S. is competing with the ultra-cap companies, the trillion-plus-dollar companies that are borrowing money or raising capital to fund these massive A.I. programs. So there's now become an alternative. There are still the alternatives of European economies and Japan and China and things like that. But now you're starting to see corporate companies as an alternative to low-risk debt. And those companies are pretty well-established. They're great businesses. And there's a lot of demand there. So that puts upward pressure on the costs to raise debt. And when you're raising another $8 trillion and potentially you're going to have to pay a higher interest rate, that's going to then continue to fuel the deficit interest, which then helps to balloon the debt side, the overall debt side. So you went through $40 trillion of U.S. debt. There's going to be upward pressure on that if you have to pay a higher price in order to attract capital. We've got $8 trillion. That's $40 trillion of debt that you need to refinance in the next eight months. So I think all those things together, there's always the random walk, which is, I mean, I don't know what the random walk is going to be. That's part of the mystery of it, right? We've got a very strong El Nino this year. There's probably going to be some environmental disasters that you're going to have to deal with. And there could be another hot war that erupts somewhere else in the world. There's a lot going on right now. And it's a kind of situation. where you're more likely to see these people news then you are to see news that's uh that's supporting uh lower risk more stability more certainty and i think in that environment you're going to end up with more reasons to own gold as an alternative and more reason to own gold miners like phoenix metals or gold companies like phoenix metals um to get exposure to that underlying commodity
Speaker 1yeah great summary there i wonder what your thoughts are on the potential for rate hikes ahead an increase in the fed funds rate we saw kevin warsh's first jackson hole speech i mean all these fed chairs they basically say a bunch of neutral sounding stuff that all cancels each other out at the end of the day market analysts are like left combing through okay how many times did he say hike how many times did he say this to just try to figure out what's going to happen up ahead but nonetheless it does appear that more fed watchers and analysts are now coming to the conclusion okay there's at least a higher an elevated chance of a rate hike coming up ahead compared to what it previously been anticipated a lot of people believe that that would be bearish gold it generally means higher yields on debt instruments and so people move into that seeing as gold doesn't uh give any sort of yield however we're in a weird conundrum where at the same time this is happening treasury secretary scott besant is talking about doubling treasury buybacks to try to bring the yields down here perhaps signs of an emerging sovereign debt crisis how do you see all this playing out and and how do you think it could impact the gold
Speaker 2market so i mean and that's that's what i would call uh short these are short-term influences on the price of gold and so there's a lot of job owning going on in the u.s right so and and it's great if you can do it right it's great if you can um if all you need to do is say something and it affects it affects yields it can do that although i if you're if you're expecting higher yield i mean i know that treasury that um you know treasury secretary uh scott then he wants yields long to be able to go down right and he's and he's he's concerned with the debt spiral right he wants to reduce the the cost of long-term debt he wants to reduce the interest rates i i would be concerned if i was him too um it's a it's a it's a big problem and it's not something that's getting resolved right now um and so he when he came out and he started talking about how they're going to buy back on longer dated debt in order to reduce the cost of the debt um you know and the immediate reaction was to reduce rates and then a couple days later the rates were right back where they were right so so things now and and generally speaking any government is i don't think there's ever been a history of a government that has been able to uh push back and change the actual market and the actual market is driven by fundamentals right people people will if you if you're going out and saying to people that it's it doesn't look like you know the sky doesn't look like it's blue and the market is looking out and they're seeing the sky is blue and they're like no i don't i don't believe that right so uh so there's a bit of jaw-blowing going on from um uh from scott percent trying to trying to push the yields down on the basis that they have all this debt that they've got to finance um over the next 6 to 12 months now with uh with the new head of the fed i mean uh i i just don't know i mean so he's he's saying that he's going to rein in inflation we'll have to see and he's just one vote he's just one vote on uh uh of of all the uh of all the fed chairs right so uh if if the majority of the fed chairs vote to increase uh rates then their their rates are going to go higher right um so but we'll see we'll see what happens i think uh he you know when he first came out he was like oh my god i'm going to have to wait and see what happens and then when he came in he was he talked a lot he talked a lot about how he was going to but he said i wasn't going to give as much information to the market uh to try and uh you know there needs to the fed needs to be sort of be able to work did it you know recently he he did give an indication that he's more hawkish but we have to see that we have to actually see that they're actually going to actively try to manage inflation my concern when he was brought in was that he uh was more likely to be influenced by the uh by the government in terms of monetary policy and um and i i think and i think that still remains to be seen so his his comments yeah they've they've pushed down the price of gold um you know we're up through 4600 now we're back to sort of 4400 and that's a short-term impact we'll see what happens in september we'll see what happens over the course of this year we'll also see what happens with inflation um and you know that the ongoing issues with trade and tariffs and things like that those aren't going to reduce inflationary pressures and so there could be a need to raise interest rates and raising interest rates will make uh will make the interest a little the debt a little more attractive to buy in the short term but it will compound and create a bigger impact on the deficit which is going to be a bigger problem um in the near term and you know um the reality is that that can get a lot bigger before it becomes cataclysmic uh for the u.s but uh the investors will start will continually start to become a little more focused a little more focused a little more focused on it and at some point in time it will get to the point where it starts to spiral and you start to see it really and the only way to get out of it the only way to get out of real debt issues is to inflate your way out of debt and so if you're in that if you're in that scenario gold is going to be an incredibly good place to start and i think that's going to be a really good place to start and i think to be to park some of your uh to park some of your exposure as a as a portfolio manager or as a individual investor it's going to become a lot more normal to have some part of your portfolio that's going to be uh represented by hard assets hard assets being commodities real estate and gold
Speaker 1let's touch on copper and then we'll dive into phoenix metals um it's been performing tremendously so far this year hitting multiple all-time highs we're currently sitting around six dollars and seventy cents a pound you know interestingly when the war broke out gold and silver took quite a hit and just basically have been consolidating sideways throughout much of that time copper during that time hitting you all-time high so far more resilient in the aftermath of that how are you currently viewing the supply demand dynamics is from what i understand it's a simple math problem here and um how much higher do you think we could go on the copper price in your
Speaker 2view i love copper and um copper weight makes is way more understandable than gold right gold gold is entirely demand driven right most of the gold that's ever been mined out is still floating around in some bank vault or jewelry or or whatever but it doesn't really get consumed or as copper does right so there's a lot of things that are driving the copper trade and there's both the demand side and the supply side that are both supporting higher prices so um first of all you've got um the electrification trade uh so you've got you know bigger push into electricity electric cars electrical everything uh the biggest like that's a very direct drive into copper you if you want to build if you want to build electric electrical power production which you need more of if you're going to be powering more things with electricity uh unicop unicop unicop wiring it's the best cheapest conduct even even with the rise and the price of copper still the cheapest conductor you've got uh and it's an effective one right so so you got the electrification that that also ties in with the ai ai trade you know you've got uh more investment in ai more investment in ai is going to drive uh carbon demand i mean that's just going to happen and then you've got and this is there's a there's two other things that i think are um are really important but um maybe not people are aware of it but i think i feel like this is something that doesn't necessarily get um reflected as much when you're looking at carbon demand is when it's deglobalization right so if you want to reduce your reliance on foreign supply uh supply chain you have to develop your own you have to develop it all internally which means uh you need to develop refining capacity it means you need to develop more mines right it means you uh and and refining like you you need to build copper refineries you also need to build other kinds of refineries other kind of refineries are still going to require copper in order to build them but um you need to these are things that you need specifically to invest in there's a huge amount of investment to reshore your supply chain critical minerals all these things require metals and and copper in order to be done same thing with your with your remilitarization so we've gone through a period of time where there's been a significant amount of conflict over the last four years and and the world and there's a certain aspect of the world that was supplying um supplying russia there's a certain aspect of the world that was applying supplying ukraine um which are drawing down stockpiles so then we had uh then we had the war you know with we had the conflict with israel and gaza and that's that also you know creates its own drawdowns of stockpiles and then you had the war with rent so all these things require replenishment you've got to replenish your munitions and you've got to replenish your munitions and you've got to replenish your goods right so that's why that's one of the reasons why you know the anthony trade has become a lot more relevant the last, in the last couple of years, but it also will, all these things will also drive copper demand, right? So, so you've got your, so you've got all those things that are driving copper. Um, and then there's the supply side. And this is the thing that I've, I've spent a lot of time on permitting and nobody wants to spend a lot of time on permitting. Um, but I spent a lot of time on permitting because I've been operating in Canada for quite some time. And, and permitting, if you're, if you're outside of North America, permitting can be, you can get things done, uh, more quickly, but there's also the reality of building copper supply. So when you're, it's, it's most copper supply is, is concentrate, right? So, um, you've got, you, you basically, you mine it out, you break it down, you float it, you create this powder, which you then have to get to market. And, and the deposits don't really care where they're located, the market for copper concentrators. And the smelters are usually located in Asia, um, or, uh, or Europe, right? So, so you've got to, you've got to get it to market. And, and so once you get it, and in order to get it to market, you have to have transportation infrastructure. And sometimes the concentrates that you're building are dirty. So they might have arsenic or they might have antimony, which is, is a deleterious element, uh, if you can't create a product on. So you've got all these things that are working together. It takes you usually, like 25 years to develop from discovery to getting a large copper deposit into production. And so as much as copper prices have gone up quite a bit, there's a significant timing delay that will allow you to start bringing new supply online. And that's the thing that's going to keep supporting higher copper prices for longer. I, I'm not going to pretend that I, I have a great handle in terms of how high copper prices are going to be. Some people think we go, go to like 10 bucks. Right. That's, I, I, I'm fine to say that it can go to 10 bucks for a period of time. At some point in time, there will be a supply response, but the supply response is probably 10, 15 years away from a major supply response. And until that period of time, you're going to get, um, you're going to be in a supply demand imbalance and that's going to continue to support higher prices. So for most copper, you know, a high cost copper producer might be like, uh, you know, two and a half, three bucks, right? If you're finding new, um, high quality copper deposits, the average price, the average price might be something like a buck to about 50. These are incredible margins that you can apply as these new deposits. And that's, that's part of the reason why I'm interested and why I was interested to come to Phoenix metals is because you've got this beautiful combination between copper and gold and, and those are different kinds of cycles. You've got copper, which is cyclical, you've got gold, which is counter cyclical. And both of those have potential to be, uh, an extreme demand, uh, over the course of the next five to 10 years.
Speaker 1That's a perfect segue into discussing Phoenix metals. Uh, I'd love for you to unpack the company, um, give us an overview and kind of let us know what the long-term game plan is at the
Speaker 2company. Right. So I was, um, you know, so I came to Phoenix metals in the last few months. I took over the CEO role, um, a few months ago before that I was with, um, um, I was the CEO of Mayfair bull and, uh, I'm still a shareholder Mayfair. Um, and, uh, I'm still a shareholder of Mayfair. Um, and, uh, I'm still a shareholder Mayfair. Um, I'm a bit like, I, um, you know, I was, I was reluctant to leave Mayfair. Uh, you know, I, I, I, the team that we built there was, um, incredibly high quality. I really like the people that I worked with there. And we came up with a very unique strategy, uh, to move forward on that. But I got approached by, um, by the former CEO, uh, Phoenix metals, a guy named Jeff Stibber, who's the current director, uh, and, and some of the shareholders. To come and they wanted me to come and take over the CEO role. So I sat down and I went through the story with them. And after, after getting the pitch, I, I realized that it was too good of an opportunity for me to pass up, which is why I ended up, uh, leaving Mayfair, uh, and, and handing the reins over to, to Drew Ranwell, who's the, who's the CEO of Mayfair gold and coming and running with Phoenix, uh, Phoenix metals. So Phoenix is a very unique company for a variety of reasons. First of all, this company was created in partnership with the USO US Indian band. So all the, all the territories that we have, all the properties we have, they're underlined by the traditional territories of the USO US Indian band. And so any asset that you have in Canada, first nation support, first nation relationships are critically important, not just to getting the social license, but also to getting through the permitting process in Canada. So, so you've got this, Jeff Stibber and Chris Loader. Chris Loader is the chairman of the company. He's a non-executive chairman of the company. Jeff Stibber is the chairman of the company. Chris Loader is the executive chairman of JDS energy and mining and chief Clarence Louie came together and said, we're going to create a partnership. We're going to build this company together. And I'm going to give you the backstory of how that all happened. So, um, the Phoenix, the Phoenix that it's actually called the Greenwood, uh, copper gold district. So, uh, this is an asset that has been, there's been mining here for 130 years. Uh, and, but there's really been very little activity in 60 years or 50 years. And so it hasn't been the focus for any systematic or major exploration program by all, by a serious mining company, um, since Miranda owned, uh, an open pit here in the 1970s. And that's part of the opportunity here. So I, you know, I, uh, when I first started in a, in a, in a mining business, gold was like $350 an ounce of copper was like 80 cents, right? So, um, there's, there's a completely different opportunity that is created by a $6 copper and $4,000 gold, right? So there's assets that were overlooked last cycle, because quite frankly, today, the margins and the potential economics of them are just, they're so much better in a modern, in a modern commodity price environment. So this district is one of those examples. The difference is that there was a bunch of different companies that owned, uh, that had, uh, um, called fractured ownership of the different, um, uh, concessions that were in the area. And there was never the ability to consolidate the district. There's some key targets in the district. And they were just, there was too much, there was too much interstitial ownership of concessions. And, and that creates a problem if you're trying to, if you're trying to move forward on the development scenario. So Chris Loader started looking at this 20 years ago, Jeff Stibbard and Chris both used to swim in the historic pit that Miranda, that Miranda built when they were kids. They've been looking at this asset for a long time. And so Jeff, when, when Chris first looked at it, he was with Anglo Gold, Anglo Gold Chianti. And so he was a senior geologist there and they, they walked the property and they're like, there's a lot of copper here, but they just couldn't find, get, um, they couldn't get anybody to consolidate the district. And cause if you're going to go and, and try to buy the whole district, you buy one company, right? And all of a sudden, all the other companies that own assets in the area become aware of it. The cost to consolidate the district becomes prohibitive, right? So, so they, they approached some companies to try and do some consolidation. Um, there were some companies that tried to do it. Ultimately, there was a company that got together, Canucks got together with Golden Dawn. They did some consolidation, that company went bankrupt. All right. So, and it went bankrupt because of mismanagement. And, you know, again, these were not serious mining companies that were, that were working in the district. So that company went to receivership and through the receivership process, um, Jeff Stibberd and Chris Loader and Chief Planner. So we came together and said, we're going to bid on this together and we're going to create a new company. So they did that as a private company. Uh, and so, and, and now, and they funded it, they put about $13 million into it as a private company. And now, and about a couple of months ago in early July, they took the company public. We raised $46 million. And the whole point here is all the historic work today, uh, history, all the historic drilling that was done, it was only done to 170 meters. This is a, uh, these, these kind of districts can go quite deeper. Um, you can, if we're looking for, uh, high grade feeder zones that, that have created these systems, you're also looking for a deeper potential porphyry target that could be a mineralized porphyry, um, that could create a completely different kind of opportunity in this district. But there's multiple, there's 40 different underground mines or open pit mines that have been developed in this district historically. Um, but nobody has done a systematic drill, program here. Nobody has ever looked for bulk tonnage targets here. And so that's what we're looking for. There's, there's five different targets that we're going to be drilling off. There's one target called Lexington, which we're drilling on right now. Lexington is not the biggest target we have on the property, but it is the one that we have the most information. There's about 170 holes that have been drilled into Lexington. Most of that drilling was focused on a high grade, the sort of cigar shaped high grade underground resource that we have there. And they were drilling from surface and they were hitting 0.3 to two grams per ton gold from surface, plus another 0.25 to 0.5% copper. And, but they weren't focused on a potential open pit target. They were just focused on this high grade underground. So we're looking at Lexington as a bulk tonnage target. There's another, if you're going to the north of that and the biggest target area is the Phoenix target area. So Phoenix target area hosted a historic pit that was run by this company called Gramby. Right. So Gramby was acquired by Naranda in 1976. And, and Naranda ended up shutting down the operation, but there was 27 million tons, that was taken out from the historic pit, the average grade was 0.9% copper, 1.14% gold, and it was like a two and a half to one strip ratio. That would create wicked economics in today's environment, right? So if you're looking at most copper gold assets, you're looking at something that, you know, there's a lot of assets that have sort of 0.36% copper, copper equivalent, maybe 0.6 would be at the high end for copper equivalent. We're looking at a district that we think has the potential to be a billion tons of 0.5, 0.5, you know, and maybe it's 0.3, 0.3, maybe it's over 0.5, 0.5, right? But if you line that up with other copper gold districts, the grade tenure shows incredibly well, it's higher grade, it's low strip, and it's bulk tonnage, right? So a billion tons would be about 50 million ounces of gold, and about 15 billion pounds of copper. That is a big district, but it's multiple deposits, multiple deposits that in and of themselves, you could create a company out of. Lexington, we think of as potentially being 150 to 200 million tons as a potential target. There's the Phoenix South target, which is the extension of the historic pit. We're drilling off a 1500 meter by 750 meter target area there, and we're drilling it down to testing to 200 meter depths. So we're not going to hit on every hole. The whole point of a systematic program is to understand the potential of the district. But that in itself is another sort of 250 to 300 million ton potential target. Then you move south into J.D. Golden Crown, which is my favorite target area. So J.D. Golden Crown is different. It's a sort of a sheared zone, there's more tension, there's more upgrading in the mineralization and veins. There's some sheeted veining or a stockbroke zone that you're getting near service. But there's some really, really interesting historic results that are driving our interest in that area. So you're added to some trenching in the north, in the northwest, and that returned five meters of half an ounce, two meters of almost an ounce per ton gold. Pretty interesting near surface mineralization. There's an intrusive sort of quartz diorite that actually outcrops the surface. We've sampled it. It's great. It's averaging around 2.4 grams per ton of what we've found. So far, it's rare to see these kind of quartz diorites mineralized. We think that this, this could be a part of one of the feeders for the entire system. That's in between the trench results that we see in the northwest and some historic shafts that are in the southeast. And so the shaft area, the historic shafts, these were shafts that were in production in the 1920s, the Winnipeg shaft and the global ground shaft. They were focused on this king vein. And there was a company called Merit Mining that drilled this zone in the 2000s. And so they hit, you know, three and a half, two and a half meters of 435 gram per ton gold. You know, 2.6 meters of 196 gram per ton gold. And, and, and anything upwards down to like, you know, pretty significant, like 12 meter hits at like 9.6. Pretty interesting high grade results that in today's environment would be really interesting. But what you don't see in that historic drilling is while they were drilling these for the king vein, they were, they were also hitting all of these little veins and veinlets and stock works on like she had vein system that, you know, anywhere from like two centimeters to half a meter wide that you're not going to focus on an underground mine on. But instead of looking at an underground target, this is a three and a half kilometer long 500 meter wide that's outlined with a historic golden soil anomaly with trench results in the north mineralized quartz diorite in the center. And the historic and the historic shafts in the southeast. So that is a huge target. It's near surface. You bulk that out. You dilute down the high grade veins and you're looking at something that could that could be a half a billion, two billion times in and of itself. Right. So you start to see these things together. You're seeing that like, you know, maybe it's not a billion times. Maybe it's only half a billion times. Half a billion times is pretty consistent, pretty consistent with Arizona. Sonoran that was but that was less than I was. About 350 million tons at, you know, 0.56. You got Troy list. They've got 300 and I think 24 million tons. A great point for nine grand pretend goal. 0.06% copper. You know, you've got other other companies out there. Cisco Cisco metals. That's a 1.7 billion ton asset, but about 0.36% copper. Um, you got north out copper and gold. You know, that's a that's a 1.2 billion ton target. That's like it's grading 0.12% copper. It's probably grading 0.25% copper. This district has higher copper grades than what we're seeing in these other districts. We've got to drill it off to prove it up and it's got a wicked gold kicker. And so there could be some very high grade underground resources that are developing here. Um, those three target areas are the, are the primary target areas. You've got Lexington, you've got the south, the Phoenix south, and you've got the JD golden crown targets. Those three targets could be a billion tons in and of themselves. We're also doing some very deep drilling there. So historic drilling is only down to 170 meters. These, these systems tend to go deep. So we're doing, we're doing 22 holes that are deep drilling holes that are going to test upwards of a thousand meters below surface. And then there's another target called bluebell and, and bluebell is a great target. It's a big target area at 1600 meters long by one kilometer wide. There were two separate rail connections that were developed in the 1920s that were feeding the mineralization from the bluebell target and getting them to ground floor. Forks where you've got the rail connection there. And so we, but the differences is that there's about four different underground operations that we've identified in the blue area, but we just have less information. So the program we're doing there is really to try and better understand the geological controls in order to do a systematic program on the next, on the next phase of our expiration program. So you've got this massive district and with big potential high grade near surface, also potential for a high grade gold underground resources that you've got while you're drilling off these bulk ton of targets and you've got it locked up in this, in the best access and infrastructure of any project that I've ever seen. So you've got highway three that comes wraps around the site. So you've got highway access to site. Every target that we have is accessible by all. All season roads, right? This, this, this asset is located immediately North of the U S border. So it's immediately North of Washington state. And, and so you've got highway access. You've got road access to site. There's three power lines that cross our site. There's a natural gas pipeline that goes across our site. There's a rail connection. So we talked about, we talked about the copper market. One of the things that, that prevents the development of new copper assets is all of the access and infrastructure. You need to put in place in order to get product to market in order to get people to site. There's a rail connection 20 minutes down the highway at Grand Forks. And that rail connection was developed because of the mining that was, that was developed in this area about a hundred years ago. And so there's all of this in situ in place. And, and this is the other thing we have, we have a 200 timber day mill on site, permitted 200 timber day mill, permitted tailing storage facility, permitted underground mine on site. So which creates a different kind of opportunity for a group like ourselves. So we've got the first nation support. We've got the technical bench strength with JDS energy and mining. We've got the geological knowledge and expertise that's created by Chris Loader and the group of guys that he's put together to move forward on this asset. And we have, and then we have the access and infrastructure to get people to site to drill all, all year round. It's not like most other Canadian assets where you have to shut things down in the wintertime because you get minus 30, minus 40 degree weather. The average temperature in Grand Forks in the wintertime is, is somewhere between minus five and minus, minus 10. You might have a couple of days of the year where you're not going to be running things, but most of the, almost, almost the whole year, you're going to be, you're going to be able to operate. So that means that we can ramp up operations. We can get drill results going. And as soon as we start, um, feeding the market with this new drill information, we're going to have consistent drill related news flow for the next two years as we drill off this deposit. People don't know about this company. They don't know about this project area. Nobody's ever really looked at this in a serious way ever. We raised 50 million. We have 47 million bucks in the bank. Um, we're fully funded to show the market what this district can be. And I think this is the kind of district that a company is going to need. Need to own in the context of you've seen massive margin expansion, both in the gold market and in the copper market. Um, these companies are generating a lot of free cashflow. The one thing they don't have is a pipeline of projects to bring into production and replace declining production profiles or create a growth profile for them. So this is a project that I think will be attractive to a larger cap company. You know, there's a big opportunity here. We are going to move this forward. We have the technical expertise to move this forward. You have to create tension as a, so, and I, you know, I've, I've only ever worked and in junior mining companies. I was with Silvercrest Metals. That was a discovery and an execution story. They discovered the Las Chispas project, and they put that into production. When I first joined that company, it was a $15 million market cap. When I left, it was about a $1.5 billion market cap, and then it was acquired for about $2.5 billion last year. After Silvercrest, I joined Artemis Gold. Artemis Gold, I was, I think, the sixth employee that came there. I searched out Artemis after I left Silvercrest. I live in Vancouver. There's only so many good opportunities in Vancouver. Artemis was a great opportunity. When I joined, it was a $400 million market cap. Today, I think it's about a $9 billion market cap. I've been part of two very successful junior mining companies that have gone from small cap to large cap over the course of three to five years. I think this is a different kind of opportunity. I think ultimately the scale of this asset is going to probably be a better fit for a large cap company to build it, but we do have the team in place that we can move forward ourselves. There's enough dual targets here and enough runway for us to continue to create tension and show that this can get bigger. That's how you create a lot of value in the mining space. There's two ways that I see creating value in the mining space. One is through discovery. Make finding deposits, grow existing deposits. That is the best way to create value in the mining space. It's hard to do. It's easier when you're working with the brownfield district than when you're looking at greenfield exploration. Greenfield exploration is incredibly high risk, incredibly hard to do. It's easier with the brownfield district and the others through execution. There's an aspect of execution with this project that we can move forward and create value. There's a huge discovery potential that's associated with this district. So that's why I'm here. I see this as, and I always put my money where my mouth is. I've acquired 2 million shares either in the market or as part of the IPO process. My average cost is probably around $1.24 a share, which is about the current share price. So people can still buy into the same share price that the CEO has as the average share price. I'm in this because I see the substantial potential value in the mining space. I'm in this because I see the substantial potential value creation associated with drilling this asset off over the course of the next couple of years. And this is a great market for new discovery. The market does pay you for new discovery. And we have a pedigree of investors that is really impressive when you compare it to other companies that are just starting out. So you look, we 22% insider own. Some of our major interest shareholders are one, the Indian mining company, which is owned by the SOS Indian band. So we have a pedigree of investors that is really impressive when you compare it to other companies. And we have a pedigree of investors that is really impressive when you compare it to other companies. Sean Rosen owns 7% of the company. He works with Chris Loader. Chris is the non-executive chairman of Phoenix Metals, but he is the president of Ascisco Gold. So he's part of the Ascisco group. So that's how Sean Rosen got involved with this. BD Capital is a shareholder. Franklin is a shareholder. Nabari is a shareholder. Nokomis is a shareholder. Libra, Primevest, Maxim. There's some very good, strong, strong investors that are involved in this. And I think that's a really good shareholder that are backing this. And because we raise the capital that we do, we have enough money to fund the expiration program and put out a lot of news flow to show how big this asset can be and what the quality of resources before we need to come back to the market.
Speaker 1Epic overview. Now, when it comes to upcoming catalysts for the company, is it those drill results, the upcoming drill program? Is that what people should be looking out for? Is there anything else you think in terms of catalysts and news flow that could re-rate the share price to the upside
Speaker 2ahead? I think, like, so we're, like, this is part of it. Talking to you on Commodity Culture is part of us starting to try and build awareness of what we're trying to do here, right? So it's a busy market. There's lots, lots going on, lots of different companies. But I think news, drill news flow is probably going to be the biggest driver of interest in this story. And so, again, we've had, we're on our 10th hole at Lexington. The first set of results you're going to see is going to be the first piece of news on, about us looking to expand the drill program. So we're, like, we have, we have one rig turning on site. We want to move it up to probably four on site. That's a pretty decent drill program. And so we're looking to get that up and running by the end of September. And then you're going to, and there's about a, so we should have our first set of news out by October, I would say. October should be the first piece of news that we see on the drill data. But by the time we ramp up our, sort of the, if you call it the, the number of rigs on site, we should be running and churning through about 6,000 meters a month. And, and then by November, we should be putting out consistent news for at least one piece of news a month to show people what the potential of this asset is. So you, you don't, there's not that much time before you're going to see some significant, there's going to be other, we're going to have some new hires that we're bringing on site. We're, we're looking at potentially working on a pre, a PEA on a restart. I talked about the, the small scale mining opportunity. And, and there's a, there's a beautiful opportunity that we have here because of all the elements that we have in place. You know, it's, it's a, there's a, there's a mill on site. There's a permanent tailing storage facility. There's 2.1 kilometers of underground development. These are all assets that we have. And we have JDS, the relationship with JDS Energy and Mining to execute on a potential, a restart. So you'll see that probably next year, a PEA next year on, on the restart. And, and I'm hoping that we're going to have a resource estimate on Lexington by the end of next year. I think we'll have a resource estimate on the Phoenix target area, probably two years from now. So there's two years of solid drill news flow. And, and with that, I also think you'll see some new coverage. I think you'll see some analysts picking up coverage. And, and you'll start to see a broader awareness, of what we're, what we're doing in this space. So the, the idea is right now, we're relatively unknown. People don't really know what we're doing. And, and we hope to be in the same discussion as the Cisco Metals, you know, Northall, Copper and Gold, you know, Troilus, like these kind of companies. We think we'll probably be in the same kind of discussion of those groups. But with substantially more exploration runway and a higher grade, the one with those companies are, those are great companies, by the way. They're all great companies. Nothing, nothing but positive things to say about how they're run and advancing your projects. We just think that the opportunity at Phoenix Metals is higher grade and has more going for it than most other development projects have out in the space right now.
Speaker 1Great. Well, I'm going to put a link in the description below to the Phoenix Metals website, so people can check that out as well as social media for people who want to follow along with the company. Nick, this has been a fantastic conversation. You shed so much light on the gold space, the copper space. As well as Phoenix Metals. So very much appreciate you coming on the show. Commodity Culture is a podcast that covers investing in commodities and natural resources. If you'd like to hear more, be sure to subscribe so you were always alerted of the latest episodes.
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