Richard Bevan – Cassini Resources

ONE OFF THE WOOD: Cassini Resources managing director Richard Bevan casually sat at the bar of The Roadhouse this week and told us how this new kid on the ASX block has managed to pick up some exciting new projects in Nevada.

 

Cassini listed in January this year on the back of an interesting tenement package located in Western Australia. Could you give us a bit of detail about what and where they are?

We listed on the back of four early-stage projects in Western Australia located in the West Musgrave, out near Warburton; Forrestania; Peak Charles; and the Eucla Basin.

We worked pretty hard to get, what we considered to be a reasonable asset package. They’re all early-stage projects, but we believe they all have a great deal of potential.

Particularly the Musgrave, which we think is pretty exciting due to the fact there is plenty of exploration activity in the region being carried out by some of the bigger companies.

We’ve had some independent reports done on the ground we hold out there and it really is looking quite prospective.

What was in in particular that attracted you to assemble the package of projects you did?

For us they just displayed some prospectivity, mainly for nickel, copper and gold.

The Musgrave is mainly nickel and copper, with some platinum group elements while Forrestania is mainly nickel and gold.

The Forrestania tenement is only about ten kilometres from the Flying Fox nickel mine and about 25 kilometres south of the Bounty gold mine.

The reason the tenement had originally been identified by the guys we bought it off was that some new survey results showed an extension of the Greenstone Belt running into it, which is undercover and therefore had not previously been identified.

So that tenement is in close proximity to producing gold and nickel mines with an opportunity to discover an extension to that Greenstone Belt.

Which of the four projects has been Cassini’s major focus since listing?

We conducted a drilling program on Forrestania in late March, really just to test that there was indeed an extension to that Greenstone Belt.

That came back with some positive results indicating that is the case.

So the next stage at Forrestania is that we are going to need to obtain some environmental approvals to allow us some further access to enable us to conduct a more comprehensive drilling program.

The WA projects are ticking along fairly well considering your recent-listed status, but you have just acquired a new group of projects in the state of Nevada in the USA. How did that happen?

It came about through an Australian unlisted company called Search Resources, which had been looking at a number of projects in Nevada.

They were originally intending to IPO on those assets but we were able to structure a different transaction with them.

We just liked the assets. It’s interesting that Nevada is not that well known and is off the radar of a lot of Australians.

Real estate wise, it is the Peppermint Grove of gold districts. The US is the third largest gold producing region in the world. Nevada, by itself, comes in at number six.

That has a lot to do with the Carlin Trend that is a Gold Belt running through Nevada and one of our new deposits, the Leonid project is located in this trend.

So for us the acquisition ticked a few of the right boxes; it was a transaction of the size we could do despite having only been a listed entity for three months; and they are really good projects.

It has really brought forward our timeline for finding a potential discovery by having some more advanced project than what we already had.

 

How much more advanced are the Nevada projects compared to the WA ones?

We can pretty much commence drilling there straight away and over the next six months we should have a very good idea of what we have there.

All the Nevada projects have been subjected to some work. A lot haven’t been drilled, although the Goldstar project has returned rock chip samples of 20 grams per tonne gold, so there is gold there.

You have negotiated a Joint Venture for the Nevada projects with a local company in Renaissance Gold?

They are a highly-regarded company with a number of projects in the region. Their model is to generate these sorts of projects and to then Joint Venture them.

The way our Joint Venture has been structured reduces a lot of our risk. We can spend money on these projects as long as the exploration results support it.

It wasn’t an expensive acquisition; it was mainly scrip so that means we have been able to maintain our good capital structure while binging in some, what we believe to be, excellent projects.

I suppose one advantage of being in Nevada is that you can dig up all that gold, take it straight to Vegas and double it?

I once read a quote that said, ‘if you want to double your money in Vegas, fold your bills in half and put them in your pocket’.

As far as being in Nevada goes, our chairman Mike Young pointed out that in terms of sovereign risk, the last time there was any trouble there was in 1861 during the American Civil War.

It is a very good mining environment with a lot of expertise and infrastructure.

All the big guys are there and there is still a lot of exploration activity going on. A lot of people think Nevada has been mined to death for gold but there have actually been more significant multi-million ounce discoveries there, in the last ten years, than what there has been in Australia.

You mentioned your chairman Mike Young. How much of an advantage is it for Cassini having somebody with his background involved?

Mike completed his geology studies in Toronto so for him Nevada is like what Kalgoorlie or Ballarat is to an Australian-trained geologist.

When he first saw the projects he understood how good the gold district is they are located in.

Also, a lot of his contemporaries are now working in that area running gold companies, which affords us another level of access and provides already established relationships in the region.

Another key for us is a fellow called David Johnston, who is an Australian-trained geoscientist based in Utah.

He’s worked for such companies such as Western Mining, Rio Tinto, LionOre and Independence Group.

He is very experienced and well-regarded within the industry and he will be running those projects for us.

So while we have been able to leverage of those relationships to pick up some very good projects we also have an already established network in terms of logistics and access to good exploration people.

As exciting as Nevada is, will it deflect your attention from the WA projects?

Our intention is to operate the two in tandem. We have the capital to run both and because the Australian projects are at such an early stage there are things we can do to add value to those and progress them.

We do need to be mindful about where we spend our money, but the good thing is that with the Nevada assets, especially with some of the early drilling programs, we should know sooner rather than later if we do have something there.

We can then sit back and assess where we would be best placed to allocate our capital in terms of adding value.