Former LAC officers plan share offering, TSE listing

Toronto-based Tri Origin Exploration, a private company with mineral properties in Ontario and Australia, plans to make a share offering of $1.5-2.25 million in preparation for listing on The Toronto Stock Exchange.

The offering is made up of units, each consisting of one common share and one-half of a series A warrant. The unit price has not yet been set. Managed by two former LAC Minerals (TSE) officers, Dennis Sheehan and Robert Valliant, Tri Origin has spent $700,000 exploring its Ontario properties since its incorporation in 1989.

More recently, Tri Origin picked up a base metal-gold property in New South Wales, Australia, the Lewis Ponds.

In its preliminary prospectus, Tri Origin says it plans to use $515,000 from the proceeds of the offering to finance a 2-stage work program at Lewis Ponds. The company will split the remainder of the proceeds between its four properties scattered across northern Ontario: the Sault property, 90 km north of Sault Ste. Marie; the English property, 38 km south of Timmins; the Sioux property, 32 km southwest of Sioux Lookout and the Savant property, 26 km northwest of Savant Lake.

Valliant says both the Sioux and Sault properties were chosen for their potential to host Hemlo-Bousquet type gold mineralization. During his days at LAC, Sheehan discovered the Bousquet No 1. orebody, which became the first of a long list of deposits found in the Cadillac gold camp of northwestern Quebec. Today, LAC’s Bousquet complex produces more than 100,000 oz. gold per year.

“To our thinking, those properties (Sault and Sioux) have a large number of geological similarities to the Bousquet-Hemlo geological model,” said Valliant.

Joining Sheehan and Valliant on the board are Ian Hamilton, former general counsel of LAC.