Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Commodity TV in a new edition of our online interview series. We are really happy and want to talk for an update with Meridian Mining. And just before we start, I want to say, as usual, that this program was paid for and is on behalf of Meridian Mining for this reason. Oh, let's get started. Gilbert Clark, the CEO, is here with us. Gilbert, hi. How are you? Good to see you.
Very good to be back on the show again and looking very well. Good summer.
Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, summer. Yeah, it's fall already, but we had a minus one here today. So, really cold. [laughter]
Anyhow, I must say your company is doing extremely well. You guys really delivered, and that's not normal, but as we know that in the mining space. But your stock is now over 100% up since we first started. I think we were like 50 cents or something, and you are now a dollar, $1.18, $1.20, which is terrific delivery, I would say. But you are also in very, yeah, elephant territory, prospective territory, and that's what we want to talk about because you would become the next mine in Brazil, is my feeling, to be honest. And so from that side, let's start with your, yeah, terrific drill results you brought out at Santa Helena. So you must be happy.
They are. We really are very happy. And just on the value growth of the company over the last two years, we've done a lot of counter-cyclical investment, which is drilling resources, permitting, environmental studies, and now we're seeing that the search for near-term developers of copper and gold is exactly where Meridian sits. And actually, since the start of the year, we're up nearly 300%, and that's only a small fraction of the value. And part of that value creation recently has been the very prospective high-grade infill drill results at the Santa Helena deposit. You know, we really focus on drilling out resources and reserves. That's key to any mining company. And that's why, say, at Cabacal, we're at 89% of our reserve is in the proven category. And we want to drill out Santa Helena to make sure we get that reserve category in the years to come. So that was a really great result for us. Lots of high-grade copper, gold, silver, and zinc. This project is only some 10 kilometers from Cabacal, but we see tremendous exploration and resource development upside at Santa Helena, and that's one of the reasons why we made the decision at the start of the year to actually permit Santa Helena as a second production hub. You know, it may be just an open pit, but if it continues to grow and near-mine exploration upside and resource upside is realized, well, then we're already pre-permitted as a second producing hub. And that's so typical of these very productive and lucrative VMS belts.
Mhm. Super. It would be a satellite then for Cabacal, right? You could use that plant.
We've got the possibility of actually trucking it up to Cabacal, or we've got a second satellite production hub, which is, you know, as when you look at these VMS belts, they've always got multiple producing hubs that go for decades and decades.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So what I found also impressive is not only that you had those terrific drill results, like 7.1% copper equivalent, 4.67, 6.7, again 5.9% copper equivalent, which is all associated with gold, then the copper, but what was also, it looks like that you guys found, yeah, I could say, a new gold frontier here, right?
Yeah, the Aquiri. The Aquiri, that's a very exciting prospect for us. The Aquiri, there's a mine to the west of us being mined by Aura Minerals, and it's a very productive horizon. We could see some anomalous mineralization, and we actually found the contact between this younger sediment, the Aquiri, on the VMS belt. And we channel sampled, and we had assays going up to one and a half gram gold just in this one little area that we found. So essentially what we've done for our shareholders, and it's through the very highly skilled geologists in the field, is a whole new gold exploration portfolio is opened up to the east of Santa Helena. And that's also one of the reasons where we looked at having it permitted as a second hub. We've not just permitted it for a flotation gravity circuit like Cabacal. We've also permitted it for a CIL plant, which is the typical processing plant for free-milling gold. So that's very interesting for us. It's a whole new exploration portfolio of rocks for us to explore, and it really, yeah, it was very exciting for us because we always knew that the Cabacal belt is one of the, which I think is without doubt going to be one of the most exciting resource and exploration plays in the years to come. But now we've got a whole new area to explore for gold mineralization. And so we're very excited about that potential.
Mhm. Fantastic. And also I saw Santa Helena North, you gave an update there that looks like this is something, yeah, more brand new. Of course, because I don't see any dots here really that there has been something drilled.
So yeah, to the north of Santa Helena, we've been very successful with IP, induced polarization geophysical techniques. And what we're interpreting to the north of Santa Helena is it's been folded. So we've got the same mine sequence of rocks folded and brought to the surface to the north of us. And we've still got an area there to actually survey. And all of that's undercover. So we haven't got any surface expression up there, but it's looking quite prospective. We put one hole into it just to test the theory. It came back with sulfides, which is what you want to see. So there's an additional, you know, more rocks, more potential resources to be defined just to the north of Santa Helena. So again, that's why we made the decision at the start of the year: let's just not permit this as an open pit because this is all shallow mineralization. Let's permit this as a new second operational hub for the company.
Mhm. Okay. Super. So that is maybe a little bit more in the time frame later then, I would guess. So let's move to Cabacal because you are doing your definitive feasibility drill program because you are doing the definitive feasibility study. How is it going there? Because that would be the way fast to production, right?
Absolutely, and the DFS is well advanced. We're wrapping up the metallurgical studies now. The drilling's all but completed. The results have been very interesting for us. It's got some of the most superior economics of any project in the world today. And we've got such robust commodity prices. Look, I think if we look at today's long-term consensus, let's not look at the spot price. I think the NPV grows to over 1.3 billion USD post-tax with an IRR approaching 90%. You know, these are tremendous numbers, but at the same time, what we want to prove with the DFS is Cabacal does not need fantastic commodity prices to be highly profitable. We actually work in the down cycle also, which is very important when you look at the future. But I see at the moment we're in a tremendous gold market. I think we're going to see that continue into 2026. And my view on copper for 2026 is very bullish. I think it's going to hit above $11,000 a ton.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I see it the same way and I think it's not only 2026. Those are the next years to come, maybe decades. Because we are at a complete turning point with the metals and also copper is moving into a long-term deficit here because there are no new mines, right? That's the major problem.
