Int’l Northair cashes up for exploration

One of the few juniors still banging on rocks in Mexico is International Northair Mines (INM-V).

The company raised $250,000 this summer for further exploration through the sale of 1.4 million units priced at 17 apiece. A unit consists of one common share and a full warrant entitling the purchase of an additional share at 20 in the first year or 25 in year two. Rick Rule of Global Resource Investments, in San Diego, Calif., took down the main portion of the private placement.

Northair’s president, Fred Hewett, says Rule is impressed by the company’s success rate and by the amount of money spent in the field versus that spent on overhead.

Northair’s exploration efforts in Mexico are led by James Robinson, vice-president of exploration. Over the past five years, the company has evaluated some 500 properties through a combination of belt reconnaissance programs and submittal solicitation. This resulted in the acquisition of five projects, four of which were optioned to the likes of Battle Mountain Gold, Teck and Meridian Gold. Hewett says that while none of these projects turned into mines, the company did succeed in acquiring valid targets and attracting the interest of major companies.

In March, Northair optioned a 51% interest in the Lobos gold property to Leadville Mining & Milling (LMMI-O). Situated in Sinaloa state, 40 km north of the city of Culiacan, the Lobos property hosts zones of epithermal, low-sulphidation gold mineralization. The mineralization is associated with pervasive silica flooding, veining, micro-veinlets and hydrothermal breccias, and occurs in a fine-grained flow-banded unit paralleling the flank of a rhyodacite porphyry intrusion.

Northair defined the main target over a 1.8-km strike length by mapping, sampling and mechanized trenching. The mineralization is contained in a 25-to-100-metre-wide corridor. Colluvium and surficial deposits mask about 75% of the corridor. More than 400 surface and underground samples taken along this corridor averaged 1.22 grams gold per tonne.

Leadville completed a first pass of drilling in April, testing the main corridor of mineralization with 24 reverse-circulation holes for a total of 837 metres. Northair called the initial results promising. The best grade was intercepted in hole 1, which yielded 3.22 grams across 4.58 metres starting at a down-hole depth of 9.1 metres. The widest intercept was 21.3 metres grading 1.39 grams beginning at 13.7 metres of depth in hole 22. The remaining intercepts are highlighted by:

– 4.6 metres of 3.07 grams starting from a depth of 7.6 metres in hole 9;

– 7.6 metres of 1.05 grams starting at 16.8 metres from surface in hole 15;

– 9.1 metres of 1.82 grams at 15.2 metres of depth in hole 17; and

– 6.1 metres of 1.86 grams starting from surface in hole 19.

“[The drilling] showed there is a structure that needs a lot more work to define exactly how it occurs and what the tonnage potential is,” says Hewett.

Leadville carried out trenching this summer, though the effort failed to uncover any targets outside of the mineralized corridor. Northair is now waiting to hear what Leadville intends to do next at Lobos.

Leadville can earn a 51% interest in the property by spending US$1.5 million on exploration, paying a total of US$160,000 cash and issuing 120,000 shares over three years.

Northair is returning to the field in early October and targeting gold, gold-enriched volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) and copper-gold deposits throughout Mexico. “We are one of the few left in Mexico, with guys in the truck out looking at projects, banging rocks and taking assays,” says Hewett.

International Northair has 7 million shares outstanding, or 9.1 million fully diluted, plus $625,000 in working capital.