They may no longer be Independent Nickel, but Sudbury junior exploration mavens Richard Murphy and Guy Mahaffy are working to infuse their latest venture, Ginguro Exploration Inc. (TSX:GEG), with the same spirit of success.
Having carried their prior effort Independent Nickel through to a successful takeover by Victory Nickel in 2008, the two are using the experience to shepherd Ginguro through the market. Their focus is on their Pardo gold property 65 kilometres northeast of Sudbury.
“We’re not just looking to get the next drillhole in a press release and whatnot and run around town, showing it to people,” says Mahaffy, chief financial officer and director of Ginguro, titles he similarly held at Independent.
“There is a long-term vision for the company, for sure, to build something here.”
The groundwork for Ginguro’s current incarnation was laid over the past several years, when Mahaffy provided some part-time CFO services to the company while working full-time at Independent Nickel. When Ginguro’s former leadership parted ways with the company in early 2009, Mahaffy found himself appointed interm CEO.
With $200,000 in the bank and no active exploration, Ginguro soon took note of former Independent Nickel director Wayne Whymark’s efforts to assemble a land package for a private company, optioning the Pardo property from Endurance Gold Corporation (TSX:V - EDG)and staking around it.
Noting its potential, Ginguro picked it up in July, with the board of directors naming Richard Murphy as CEO. Whymark, the founder and former president of Wallbridge Mining Company Ltd., was also named director and chairman.
Ginguro now holds a full 100 per cent interest in 80-square kilometres of claims, with the option to earn up to 70 per cent in an additional 33-square kilometres.
The markets reacted to the move, with the stock trading more in the two days following the transaction than it did since the company went public two years prior. This allowed the company to complete a $600,000 private placement, with another placement for $1 million put forward in November.
Although Ginguro is also looking at opportunities for joint-venturing on its optioned iron-oxide, copper and gold El Alto property in Chile, the apple of the company’s eye remains on Pardo.
Company officials hope it to be the first paleoplacer-style gold deposit of its kind in North America, similar to those seen at Witwatersrand in South Africa, one of the largest-scale gold deposits in the world.
This type of deposit is characterized by former streams or small rivers which carried free gold downstream, settling in and compressing in the rock over time. This geological structure -- though not the gold -- has been confirmed at Pardo by Dr. Darryl Long, a sedimentologist with Laurentian University’s department of earth sciences and mineral exploration center.
Seventeen holes have been drilled on the property, with visible nugget-style gold intersected in one.
“The fact that we were able to drill one of those in a 113-square-kilometre land package, the theory is that unless we’re extremely, extremely lucky, the more plausible explanation is that there’s more of those down there,” says Mahaffy. Because the style of deposit lends itself to nuggets rather than veins, it is more difficult to delineate a deposit, says Mahaffy.
Roughly $500,000 will likely be spent on exploration through the winter months. While this isn’t a big sum, the shallow depth of the mineralization and the closeness to strong Sudbury infrastructure allows for things to be accomplished more inexpensively, he says. In Independent Nickel’s previous project in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, $200,000 paid for a single drillhole at nearly a kilometre of depth; in contrast, $150,000 paid for 17 drillholes at Ginguro’s Pardo project.
In time, another phase of work will involve sampling larger accumulations of rock. This move, similar to that seen in diamond exploration, will provide a better sense of grades.
In time, the company hopes to continue the same path as its principals had followed with Independent, attracting the attention of a major mining firm who’d buy the project or the company, or even a joint venture, says Mahaffy.
However, “we’re not there yet, and we’ve got a lot of work to do,” including raising money and advancing the project in the coming years.
www.ginguro.com
