BEAVER CREEK, COLORADO — The executive team behind Integra Gold — a Quebec-focused explorer purchased by Eldorado Gold (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO) for $590 million in July — intends to acquire Kinross Gold’s (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) DeLamar gold-silver project in southern Idaho under the newly branded Integra Resources (CSE: ITR).
Under the agreement, Integra Resources has offered Kinross $7.5 million in cash, and 9.9% of all issued and outstanding shares once the transaction closes.
The acquisition would give Integra exposure to DeLamar’s former open-pit and underground mine, which shuttered in 1998 due to gold prices below US$300 per oz. gold, after producing 1.6 million oz. gold and 100 million oz. silver.
George Salamis, Integra Resources president and CEO — and former chairman of Integra Gold — sat down with The Northern Miner at the Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek, Colo., to discuss the acquisition and plans for the company.
“The band is back together again and the setup can’t be better,” Salamis said, noting that Integra Gold’s former president and CEO, Stephen de Jong, has joined the company as director, while Andrée St-Germain retains her title of chief financial officer.
George Salamis, president and CEO of Integra Resources. Credit: LinkedIn.
He said Integra is acquiring DeLamar because it bears “striking similarities” to Integra Gold’s flagship Sigma-Lamaque gold project in Val-d’Or, Quebec.
“For us, acquiring DeLamar was a no-brainer. It has all the hallmarks of what Integra Gold was five years ago,” Salamis said. “It’s in a first-world jurisdiction, has access to infrastructure, historical production — it has everything we were looking for.”
The project also comes with a historical database of 2,000 drill holes and an “entire vault of old maps, sections and plans waiting to get digitized.”
Salamis says Integra intends to use algorithm-focused artificial intelligence technology to home in on potential targets on the property — skills learned from the former company’s “Gold Rush Challenge,” launched in 2015.
In the Gold Rush Challenge, Integra Gold opened up Sigma-Lamaque’s historical databases and enticed participants around the globe with $1 million in prizes in exchange for exploration ideas.
“We’re going to take some of the magic from the challenge and run with it at DeLamar,” Salamis said. “Machine learning and immersive reality techniques to visualize orebodies have come such a long way already. There was only one company that pioneered the technology two years ago, and now there are 10 doing the same thing. It’s really spectacular what they can do now.”
Mineralization at DeLamar is geologically different than Sigma-Lamaque, being a low-sulphidation epithermal deposit hosted within an ancient volcano, versus an Archean-age, orogenic gold deposit in a structurally deformed greenstone belt.
But Salamis says the upside potential at DeLamar is the same: the deposit hasn’t been drilled since the 1990s, and the average drill hole depth is less than 100 metres, offering plenty of room for expansion.
Integra intends to release a National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource for DeLemar in the next month, and use proceeds from an upcoming financing to fund a drill campaign.
Salamis expects to drill 18,000 metres over the next 18 months to extend heap-leachable gold-silver mineralization at surface, and high-grade, vein-type feeder mineralization at depth.
Kinross Gold’s DeLamar gold-silver property in southern Idaho, which Integra Resources plans to purchase. Credit: Integra Resources.
Historical drill intercepts below the open-pit delivered 18.3 metres of 10.13 grams gold per tonne and 188.14 grams silver per tonne, and 9.1 metres of 10.9 grams gold and 204.88 grams silver.
“One of the hallmarks for Integra Gold was to just drill, and that’s what we’re going to do at DeLamar. You don’t find orebodies without doing a lot of drilling,” Salamis said. “We know where to go and where the sweet spots are … we’re going to get aggressive with it.”
On Aug. 17, as the new management team came aboard, Mag Copper changed its name to Integra Resources Corp., the stock ticker changed from QUE to ITR, and shares were consolidated on a 1-to-2.5 basis.
Shares of Integra Resources and its precursor company have traded in a 52-week range of 6¢ to $1. Shares traded at 16¢ on Aug. 15 before the management turnover, quickly rose within a week to 90¢, and traded at $1 at press time.
The company has 18.4 million shares outstanding for an $18.4-million market capitalization.
Long way from Russo by George, looking forward to more quotes my personal favorite ” diamond company end up in ditches”….all the best
SALAMIS SHAFTED THE SHAREHOLDERS OF INTEGRA GOLD ,NEGOTIATED A TAKEOVER BY ELDORADO
THAT FJUST LINED HIS POCKETS—-THE FORMER SHARE HOLDERS ARE STILL MAD AND SIT ON DEPRESSED ELD SHARES.