What have been the main developments for Northern Superior Resources over the past year? 

Northern Superior Resources (Northern Superior) recently completed a $8 million private placement with Cormark Securities, of which insiders participated for $1 million; insider ownership now stands at approximately 25%. The funding will support exploration activities in Québec and will be sufficient to drill approximately 20,000 m in the Chibougamau Gold Camp. Our strategy has been to consolidate the Chibougamau Gold Camp. Not long ago, six companies were holding the relevant assets; today there is only Northern Superior and IAMGOLD. Both companies will be aggressively drilling in 2024, looking to expand the current resource far beyond the 10 million oz the Camp currently carries. I believe the Chibougamau Gold Camp will soon join the ranks of the most active and favorite destinations for gold activities globally.  

The stars are aligning, and Northern Superior will now be aggressively advancing work in the Chibougamau at the same time as IAMGOLD is also turning its attention to the camp. We took the opportunity to consolidate the Chibougamau Gold Camp during the dark days of the cycle and it is now about to pay off!

What is your outlook for the fundamentals of gold moving forward?

The game has not started yet. Gold prices have been increasing but in reality, they shouldn’t have. Gold is highly – and inversely - correlated to the real rates, which are interest rate minus inflation. It is a negative correlation so either you need the interest rate to decrease, or you need inflation to increase and the interest rate to remain unchanged. Both these scenarios will result in real rates coming down which then makes the price of gold go up. This has yet to happen, but still, the gold price increased. A reason for the increased gold price is that central banks worldwide are selling currencies and buying gold and this trend is sure to continue. We are also seeing Asian retail buyers in the gold market as these buyers want to protect themselves from the real estate market. But also, the Yen is collapsing so they are taking action. These two factors are resulting in increased gold prices, but the gold-related equities have yet to perform. Gold equities will perform when the real rates start to decrease. At that point, we will see the price of gold accelerate, and, more importantly, the gold equities will start playing catch up to that valuation. Gold stocks have never been this cheap, yet we are on the eve of what we believe will be the biggest bull cycle of all time.

Can you detail the decision-making process before spinning out your Ontario assets? 

Northern Superior has spun out its Ontario assets to have a dedicated company (ONGold Exploration Ltd.) with its capital and a dedicated management team to advance these assets. in particular, ONGold now has the highly prospective district-scale and quasi-famous TPK project. We remain the largest shareholder of ONGold with 72% of the shares. Not only will the shareholders of Northern Superior reap significant benefits from the exploration success in Ontario, but it also emphasizes the considerable undervaluation of our rapidly progressing Québec assets. ONGold will be focused on advancing the TPK project, with particular attention to social acceptability and First Nations engagement, which is critical throughout Northern Ontario where the communities have not benefitted as much from mining activities as those in Québec. 

What are the catalysts ahead for Northern Superior in the next 12 months to 24 months?  

After closing the financing, we are finalizing our drilling plans, and over the next eight to nine months, we aim to drill approximately 20,000 meters. Following this, we will work on a resource update on the Philibert deposit. Northern Superior is currently trading just north of US$20/oz in the ground, but we are confident that as we deploy our funding to find more ounces, significantly cheaper than that. As the Chibougamau gold camp becomes more and more viable, the value of those ounces can increase much further. It is not uncommon to see M&A activities in Val D’Or at the US$100/oz level.