When Stockhouse Editorial last caught up with Green River Gold Corp. (CCR) (CSE.CCR, Forum) and its CEO Perry Little last December, the company was, like so many others, adjusting to doing business in a COVID-19 world but at the same time keeping busy with a series of new property acquisitions, partnerships, and M&A’s.

Founded in the summer of 2017, Quesnel, BC-based Green River Gold Corp. is a publicly-traded mineral exploration company that has a controlling interest in a wide variety of projects in this historic gold producing region. In addition to exploring its highly prospective hard rock gold property in the historic Barkerville area of B.C., Green River rents placer claims to placer gold miners for cash rent, in lieu of a royalty. The Company also sells mining supplies and equipment to placer miners from its 6,000 square foot facility also located in Quesnel. The Company is even a limited partner in a partnership that purchases raw placer gold directly from miners.

In this intriguing metals & mining podcast, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson was rejoined by Mr. Little to get investors and company shareholders up-to-date on the latest and greatest hits from CCR.

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

SH: As I alluded to the intro, it’s been a busy last six months for CCR and things look to be ramping up big time in the Cariboo this summer. Can you give us an update on what’s been happening with Green River Gold?

PL: Hi Dave. It is nice to be back. We have had a very busy stretch, actually going back over a year now, to about the time of the first podcast we did. We have moved the ball forward on every aspect of the business over that time….and we have a lot of aspects.

We are closing our $700,000 financing this week as well. It was originally set at $500,000 but we had a pleasant surprise recently with some sudden interest out of Europe and we were oversubscribed. A German newsletter writer has picked up on the story and is covering us for the German, Swiss and Austrian markets. It is good to be noticed.

SH: Perry, you’ve just announced commencement of the U-A-V-mag airborne drone geophysics survey on its Fontaine Lode Gold Project. These kind of geo surveys don’t come cheap. So what’s the high-end potential of what lies beneath surface here?

PL: Well, as you know, we really took our time, and we were very deliberate with the acquisition and staking of that property. In my days as a stockbroker, I had followed the Barkerville gold story for over 15 years and I had also been following our other neighbour, Omineca mining with their Wingdam project, for a long time. I was quite familiar with the area before we started getting serious looking for property in 2017. It wasn’t until March 2019 that we finally made the acquisition of the core part of the property and staked all of the surrounding ground that we wanted. In total we have about 90 square kilometres of hard rock claims that are contiguous to the Barkerville Gold Mines property.

Our timing was a little lucky. One month after we closed on the acquisition, Osisko took over Barkerville Gold Mines and began to fast track the Barkerville property to production. That brought some serious capital to the neighbourhood and things really heated up. Omineca staked a bunch of additional property shortly after that and both companies have been moving forward quickly with exploration and development. Our property is bookended by Osisko and Omineca.

Osisko’s project has an indicated resource of 3.2 million ounces of gold and an inferred resource of 2.72 million ounces of gold. We are definitely in a good neighbourhood and we got in before the prices went up.

Geologically speaking, the Fontaine property straddles an 18-kilometre length of the Quesnel, Barkerville and Slide Mountain terranes. Between the early 1970’s and early 1990’’s, sporadic work was carried out on the property, consisting of prospecting and sampling bedrock and overlying soil horizons. Several showings with anomalous gold and silver values were identified as a result of this work.

The project has not really seen some of the modern exploration techniques. We should get the results of the UAV-MAG geophysics survey within a few weeks. The survey will cover 67 square kilometres with 1,500-line kilometres with 50 metre spacing. The drones can fly at treetop level to give exceptional detail. We expect that this will help us to identify high priority drill targets for an anticipated drill program. We are very excited to see the survey results in a few short weeks. We will be announcing our 2021 surface and near-surface exploration programs for the property shortly.

SH: In a recent Stockhouse article, you detailed how – with renewed exploration – CCR is now the at the epicentre of the original Cariboo gold rush. How so?

PL: The original Cariboo Gold Rush started in 1860 and was centred around Barkerville which is only a few kilometres from our Fontaine Project. At its peak in the 1860’s and 1870’s, Barkerville was one of the largest communities in Western North America. Historic gold production in the Cariboo since the original gold rush has been about 3.8 million ounces, roughly half of that from placer deposits and half from lode deposits. Placer and hard rock activity are both picking up again. Our business model allows us to benefit from the increased levels of placer activity while searching for the big lode gold score.

There is a lot going on in the area again, for the first time in decades really. Osisko’s appearance on the scene late in 2019 has sparked interest in the Cariboo. Omineca is actively drilling on the other side of us as well. I believe it is the beginning of a new gold rush in the area. Much of the Cariboo has not really been explored using modern exploration techniques. The old-timers got the easy-to-reach placer gold but did not have the technology to go deeper or to explore as effectively for lode gold. There is a lot to be discovered yet. The sources of the placer gold found on many of the numerous creeks and rivers in the Cariboo have yet to be located. The hunt is on.

SH: Perry, the Company looks set for strong growth in 2021. How are you placed to expand operations?

PL: This initial Fontaine exploration is just the start of what we plan to do with that property, but we have several other irons in the fire as well. When we acquired the Fontaine project, we were aware of some interesting nickel showings on a portion of the property. Recent developments have highlighted that potential and we will have more to say about that over the next few weeks. In February we announced the acquisition of the 1,214-hectare Kymar Silver Project near Invermere B.C., and we just announced our initial exploration plans for Kymar for this Summer. It has some interesting historical production, and we are excited to start work on that one as well.

As you know, we are more than just an exploration company. We got started on a number of different gold-related business ventures over the past couple of years and they are all expanding this year.

SH: That brings me back to what I had mentioned earlier that the company really has developed a one-of-kind business model in the metals & mining space. Can you tell our investor audience some of the inherent benefits in it?

PL: Sure Dave. I followed and invested in a lot of junior mining companies over a couple of decades as a stockbroker. One of the issues that most junior miners face is the constant need to raise financing to pay for exploration, and the dilution that comes with it. From the beginning, I looked to find businesses related to gold mining that could generate cash flow to offset some or hopefully all of that reliance on the often-fickle capital markets. So far, we have started several businesses that service the hundreds of placer miners that are active in the Cariboo. We retail placer mining supplies, and we also sell larger placer mining equipment, much of which is manufactured by a related private company right in our shared building. Our building is located in Quesnel, in the heart of the Cariboo district and an easy commute from most of our mining properties. We are a Limited Partner in a partnership which purchases raw placer gold from the local miners and sells it to refiners and other end users. We also provide consulting and permitting services to the local placer mining community.

Those businesses allow us to maintain a talented local workforce and give us year-round access to our Cariboo properties from just down the road. Our exploration costs are reduced by having local geological expertise and a local labour force.

Ultimately, the idea is to generate enough cash flow from our other businesses to fund much of our exploration costs internally.

SH: Part of your business model is really unique in the mining space – acquire and develop placer mining claims and then leasing them out. Can you explain this in detail to our audience?

PL: In simple terms, we are a placer mining company that will never do any placer mining. Think of it as a modified royalty model applied to placer gold mining. Most placer mines are small, mom and pop operations that are chronically underfunded. We have 24 square kilometres of placer mining claims and we have a number of claims that are permitted and ready to mine. Learning from our own experience of placer mining through a private company, we came up with a model that works to allows placer miners to get mining with less start-up cost. It also gives Green River access to safe cash flows. We rent out the placer claims for a monthly cash rent based on expected gold recoveries and the placer miners take the exploration risk and develop the claims. We put up the reclamation bond. The miner saves the up-front cost of purchasing a claim and putting up the bond. We maintain ownership and get the benefit of the development work done by the renters and any exploration success that they have.

It is similar in many ways to land development, except that in our case, we acquire the land, permit it, and somebody else pays us to do the development. The amount of rent we receive is by far the lesser part of the benefit we receive. The increase in the value of the mining property as it gets turned into an operating mine, from a piece of raw forest, is the main benefit. If the miner is successful in discovering economic quantities of placer gold, the value of the claim will go up even more. We tend to own blocks of claims in the same vicinity so any mining success will push up the value of the proximate claims as well. Any money spent by the miner exploring or producing on our claims also extends the expiration date on the claims without us having to spend any money on assessment work. It works for the renter and it works for us.

SH: It would be remiss of me not to mention your stock has had been on a bit of a roller coaster ride over the last 12 months. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s a good buy right now?

PL: With a little over 54 million shares outstanding, we currently have a market capitalization of less than $4 million. For that price, investors are getting our highly prospective 90 square kilometre Fontaine lode gold project, which is right next to a gold mine that is expected to be in production in 2023. They also get 24 square kilometres of placer gold claims, a retail business, a stake in a gold trading enterprise, our Quesnel Nickel Project, and our Kymar Silver Project. We also have a 6,000 square foot combined office, retail, and manufacturing building that serves as home-base for all our businesses. We have local employees and consultants who live within an easy daily commute of all our Cariboo properties.

All that for less than $4 million, and we are just getting started. We have a lot of other ideas in the works.

For more information on the company and investment opportunities in Green River Gold Corp., visit their website at www.greenrivergold.ca.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.