Can you provide an overview of Talisker’s flagship Bralorne asset?

There are a series of things that make Bralorne stand out. The first is the historic production that has gone on there. Even though the mine has not been in commercial scale production since the early 70s, it still holds a position as Western Canada's largest gold producer. It produced 4.2 million oz. The second factor was the style of mineralization. It is an orogenic or mesothermal deposit similar to Mother Lode or Grass Valley. These deposits can get very big in size, and there is no constraint on the gold at depth or along strike. Bralorne has veins that are continuous along strike for up to 2.5 km, and have been proven down to depth at 2 km and beyond. It is incredible in any type of gold vein deposit to have that level of continuity. That is one of the reasons why Bralorne was mined for so long. Once the miners were on a vein they could just keep following it. It was one of the highest-grade deposits in Western Canada, and the historic production average was 17.7 g/t. We were able to digitize about 45,000 historic drift assays to recreate the historic mine plan to see where they mined. We then looked at grade continuity, and we could see up to a 1.5 kilometers down plunge of consistent high-grade continuity along strike.

We felt that there was strong potential that Bralorne could still be economic, because the asset was only shallowly mined, and there were ownership gaps between the historic mines. We also just got the whole belt consolidated recently, and a lot of the resource that we have been able to develop is from surface to 700 m in these ownership gaps. Bralorne is already a world class project, but there is potential for it to be so much more than it was historically.

What work has been done at Bralorne since being acquired by Talisker?

Since acquiring Bralorne in 2020, we drilled 150,000 m in under three years. We have recently released our initial stope optimized mineral resource estimate delivering nearly 1.7 million oz Au at 6.4 g/t.

How would you characterize your exploration strategy on the property?

We have tried to avoid old producing areas, because of the complexity associated with trying to mine the areas around historic stopes. About 10% of our resource is remnant areas, about 20% is along strike from historic areas, but about 70% is actually brand new vein, and they sit in these big gaps that were owned by other companies and never got developed historically.

To what extent is there existing infrastructure in place at Bralorne?

We have a camp that is connected to electricity, and we have road access that is still well in place. We also have a tailings dam and a water treatment facility, and we are permitted to process and discharge that water. The mill was taken off site in 2016, so we look to initially process off site. Ultimately the best economics are to process locally. However, it takes time to finance, acquire, permit and build a mill. We would rather look to near term cash flow without having to spend large-scale capex to get there.

What is your long-term vision for Bralorne, and how will this asset differentiate Talisker?

Our main focus coming into 2023 is at Bralorne, and we want to transition the asset into a production scenario. We have one big advantage in that we are fully permitted, and if we are able to use an offsite processing mechanism, then it is a relatively inexpensive transition into that phase. This allows us to get into cash flow fairly quickly, and I think that is something that is very important in the difficult markets we are in. We have a stockpile at surface that we can quickly process.

We understand that transitioning from exploration to production is often fraught with danger for junior companies, so we are taking a very cautious approach. However, because so much is well known about Bralorne's minability, we believe that it is a relatively low risk endeavor.