Adamera CEO touts stronger capital markets for gold juniors

VANCOUVER — Adamera Minerals’ (TSXV: ADZ; US-OTC: DDNFF) president and CEO Mark Kolebaba tells a story about his junior gold company over the past two years that is familiar to many others, with his management team forced to forego salaries to keep the lights on and maintain rights in properties they believe have a bright future.

After recent financings, however, it looks like Adamera is back in action at its historic Oversight gold project on the border of B.C. and Washington State.

Adamera has raised $1 million over the past two months, and closed a $600,000, non-brokered private placement on June 20. The financing involves 12 million units at 5¢, with each unit consisting of a share and a warrant exercisable at 10¢ for 18 months. The company’s stock has jumped off a 1¢-per-share low in January to 10¢ per share at press time.

“I could see the interest in the larger gold companies coming back to start the year, but it was still a struggle at the time for us to raise any money … the significant change for us was during the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention this year,” Kolebaba says.

“I went out to do that financing and it blossomed into something that was oversubscribed. Then our stock price shot up, and people suddenly saw value in the fact that our projects are located next to a mill that is running low on ore. Now we have enough money to get back to doing real exploration programs.”

Adamera’s portfolio includes five properties in Washington’s “Republic district,” but what it considers its most promising targets are on the Oversight and Flag Hill properties, which sit between the Torado and Republic grabens that have constrained most major gold discoveries in the region.

Oversight is in the Cook Mountain mining district along an existing haul road, 5 km from Kinross Gold’s (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) operating Kettle River mill, which could run out of ore by year-end.

At the historic Overlook deposit, Echo Bay Mines generated 280,000 oz. gold in the 1990s.

In 2014, Adamera drill tested a magnetic target at Oversight and cut massive magnetite-sulphides similar to the property’s previously mined zones.

“We thought we were dealing with skarn, and clearly it’s not,” Kolebaba says. “Echo Bay came up with the idea it was a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit, but we couldn’t make that model fit due to a lack of volcanics and contact metamorphic in the system. We now think these deposits are stratabound and sedimentary hosted.”

Adamera spent the past year conducting low-cost geochemical and modelling work at the site, and on a month ago developed a high-priority target, 100 metres south of the historic Overlook deposit. Geophysical work helped Adamera pinpoint a geophysical anomaly that coincides with “significant soil geochemistry” results.

“We needed to apply techniques that hadn’t been used in the past, and nobody had flown airborne electromagnetic (EM) surveys,” Kolebaba continues. “Part of what we’re looking for are massive sulphides that carry high-grade gold, and if you’re looking for that you probably want to do something with EM to get a strong vantage point.”

By collecting structural and geological data, Adamera gained a better understanding of the regional geology, and staked land around Overlook over the past 12 months.

“We understand our model very well there, and we’re seeing our target develop on a geochemical and geophysical level. We think we’re seeing a part of the original Overlook deposit that has been faulted,” Kolebaba says. “Everything is aligning in terms of structure right now, and we’re taking that knowledge and applying it to expand our land position.”

The company has cash for more exploration, including diamond-drilling the new target and adding airborne geophysics over its expanded holdings.

Adamera has 81.3 million shares outstanding for an $8.5-million press time market capitalization.

“It’s been a long time since we saw the light at the end of the tunnel,” Kolebaba said. “It was really a tough go with our share price down, and it’s really nice to get that recognition for our belief in the project and area after many of us haven’t been paid in two years.”