North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Valhalla Metals Inc., a privately held junior mining company focused on the exploration of the Sun and Smucker properties in Alaska's Ambler Mining District, may soon have easier access to funding through a merger with SolidusGold Inc., a company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.

Under a tentative agreement announced on Nov. 29, Solidus would acquire Valhalla through an exchange of shares that would result in current Valhalla shareholders owning 80% of the resulting company shares, with Solidus shareholders owning the remaining 20%.

It is expected that the combined company will keep Solidus' current board of directors and management team, which is loaded with geologists and executives that have worked on some of the biggest mineral exploration projects across Alaska and Canada's North.

The SolidusGold board is chaired by Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, a longtime Alaskan geologist renowned for founding and serving as the top executive of both Novagold Resources and Trilogy Metals. In 2009, Van Nieuwenhuyse was bestowed the Thayer Lindsley award for his role in the discovery of the world-class Donlin Gold deposit in Alaska during his tenure as president and CEO of Novagold and vice president of exploration for Placer Dome before that. He was also honored with the Colin Spence Award in 2016 for his role in the Bornite discovery while serving as president and CEO of Trilogy, which was spun out of Novagold for the purpose of advancing exploration and development of the Ambler Mining District. Van Nieuwenhuyse current serves as president and CEO of Contango ORE.

SolidusGold President and CEO Sorin Posescu is a geologist that worked on Novagold's Donlin Creek and Galore Creek projects over the course of a 25-year career that includes diamond exploration in Nunavut, gold-copper-silver exploration in Northern BC, and the exploration and development of geothermal resources in Nevada. Posescu brings extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, and a strong background in corporate and project valuation to Solidus.

Joe Piekenbrock, another award-winning Alaska geologist, sits on the Solidus board. Before serving as vice president of exploration for both Novagold and Trilogy, Piekenbrock was a member of the ‎Cominco Alaska ‎exploration team responsible for the discovery of the Whistler copper, Sleitat ‎tin, Shotgun gold, and the enormous Pebble copper-gold deposits in Alaska. Piekenbrock currently serves as the chief exploration officer of Western Alaska Minerals, which is exploring the Illinois Creek Mining District property in western Alaska.

In addition to the management and board, Valhalla Metals founder Bonnie Broman is expected to be a control person of the merged company. A geologist with more than 15 years of experience, Broman has managed up to 20 geologists and geotechnicians, alongside managing up to five drill rigs and surface exploration programs at remote locations such as the Ambler Mining District and Nixon Fork high-grade skarn gold mine in Alaska, and the Black Butte copper deposit in Montana.

Valhalla Metals' Sun and Smucker projects in the Ambler Mining District offer this geologist-laden team highly prospective volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits reminiscent of Ambler Metals' world-class Arctic deposit, which is found in the same rocks about 40 miles to the west.

According to a 2018 calculation, the Sun deposit hosts 1.71 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 4.32% (163 million pounds) zinc, 1.48% (55.8 million lb) copper, 1.11% (42 million lb) lead, 60 grams per metric ton (3.3 million oz) silver and 0.21 g/t (12,000 oz) gold; plus 9.02 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.18% (831.3 million lb) zinc, 1.21% (239.6 million lb) copper, 1.46% (290.3 million lb) lead, 81.7 g/t (22.7 million oz) silver and 0.25 g/t (73,000 oz) gold.

Though calculated to NI 43-101 standards, Solidus is treating this resource estimate as historical due in large part to changes in metals prices and metal recoveries since the calculation.

With 10.7 million metric tons of resource averaging roughly 11% zinc-equivalent – calculating the value of all the metals in both resource categories – Sun is already considered a major deposit in terms and size and grade.

And there is geophysical evidence that the deposit detailed at the surface represents only a fraction of a larger VMS system.

Formed on the ocean floor as black smokers billowing out sulfides, VMS deposits such as Sun are often three- to 10-meter-thick bands of mineralization that are often enriched with base and precious metals. Because they are relatively thin and tend to get bent, broken, and folded by plate tectonics, these deposits are not always easy to find.

Even large VMS deposits such as Sun are not readily noticeable on the surface.

The rich concentrations of metals, however, make these deposits highly conductive, and geophysics is a great way to trace them below the surface.

VTEM (versatile time domain electromagnetic) and ZTEM (z-axis tipper electromagnetic) geophysical surveys flown during 2019 lit up an area dipping southeast from the Sun deposit that, if representative of a continuation of the layers of VMS mineralization already tapped by drilling, could expand the resource by several times.

To provide some sense of the size potential of this target, the Sun deposit extends to a depth of 200 meters; the much wider and stronger geophysical target extends 900 meters further down-dip of the resource.

If this conductive target Sun turns out to be a continuation of the zinc-rich VMS mineralization outlined so far, Sun has the potential to rival Ambler Metals' Arctic deposit in terms of size.

Valhalla's Smucker project, which lies about 15 miles northwest of Arctic, is another promising VMS target with exploration upside.

Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority

The proposed 211-mile Ambler road, being built to provide industrial access to the Arctic Mine and other mineral projects in the Ambler Mining District, runs alongside the Sun property and ends about 10 miles southeast of Smucker.

Smucker was first discovered in 1975 by Anaconda, and Cominco acquired an interest in the property in 1994. Extensive exploration was carried out at this VMS project between 1978 ‎and 1991, including 24 holes drilled by Anaconda.

According to a calculation completed in 1986, Smucker hosts more than eight million metric tons of historical resource averaging 0.8% copper, 6.8% zinc, 2.3% lead, and 200 g/t silver.

Valhalla, which staked the Smucker project in 2017, said the extensions of the mineralized horizon remain ‎largely untested and open at depth and laterally.

The upside potential of these properties can be more thoroughly explored in a publicly listed company with access to investor capital.

A definitive agreement on the proposed Valhalla-SolidusGold merger is expected by the end of the year. Solidus plans to complete a share consolidation and private placement financing in connection with the transaction.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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• Phone: (907) 726-1095
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