Group Eleven Resources (TSXV:ZNG) - Ballywire Germanium Grades Jump on New Assays

Bart Jaworski (0:00)

Hi there, this is Bart Jaworski, CEO of Group Eleven Resources. And this morning, we have Germanium Assays to report. Matt, over to you.

Matt (0:08)

I think it's over to you. You're the one with the news. Look, obviously, we're excited to catch up with you, so things are moving at a pace over there.

Should we pull up the slide and see where we're looking at?

Bart Jaworski (0:18)

Yes, let's do it. Let's do it. So Matt, yeah, I can take over from here, now that the slides are up. And basically, we are in Ireland, just to remind you, we've got some basically a double on the old germanium numbers that we historically put out. So it's very exciting in that we're using a brand new assay technique.

So previously we were using lithium borate fusion, now we're using sodium peroxide. It digests more of the sample and we don't lose germanium through the volatile. So the end effect is a more accurate assay. And with that, as you will see, we're getting numbers that are doubles and more of the historic numbers of germanium, which were already pretty good. So we've got even better germanium numbers coming up on top of coincident with, of course, zinc, lead, silver and copper to boot. So it's becoming a high grade sample, now boosted by germanium. Germanium is obviously a very interesting metal. It's like silver on steroids, really. It's $200 an ounce. Trading right now, it's used in AI infrastructure, fiber optics and the lot. It's a very interesting metal. A lot of it comes from China and China's restricted exports in 2023 It hasn't really relaxed them. They said they have relaxed them, but realistically speaking and judging by the price action, there's not a lot in the western world and there's a massive shortage. And prices per ounce have just gone up and up and up 25% just over the last year. Like I said, now to $200 an ounce. That's a little bit of a backdrop on on germanium itself. And before going any further, let me just remind your viewers, Matt, where we are, we're in Ireland. We're in on the Rathdani trend in that yellow box. If I zoom in on that, you get Glencore in blue, our position there in green. Our discovery is Ballywire, which is what I'm going to zoom in on right now in the yellow circles.

Just to remind you, it's 20 kilometers south of Glencore's Palace Green deposit and right beside our well-known Stone Park deposit, which is a smaller, albeit shallower and richer zinc-lead deposit next to Palace Green. So let's dive into our Ballywire project. So this is the Plan View drillable map as it stands. And what we're announcing today is what I'm flashing in blue, those five new, well, five drillables that were previously announced in terms of zinc-lead, silver, copper numbers. But now we're announcing Germanium numbers. And this is the scary chart that's part of the news release. But I just want to focus your eye on the green area in here that I'm flashing. This is the new Germanium numbers.

Keep in mind the zinc-lead, the silver and the copper has been announced over various times over the last couple of years, but we never had the Germanium numbers. So we have the new Germanium numbers, which are as per the new assay method, and then the old ones in comparison, and then the change from the new to the old. So you're seeing, for example, a 32% bump here at the top, 35% higher grades.

You have some here that are 120, 180, 300% better than before. So just to focus in on a few of these, for example, hole 31 here had 3.7 meters of not only 20% zinc-lead, not only 150 grams silver, but now we're getting 62 grams per ton germanium, whereas before we had 45 grams per ton. The other caveat here is that the old germanium numbers were in-house. We hadn't put them out yet.

So we have put out some germanium numbers. The last update we did was January of 2025 So it's been quite a while since our last germanium update. These numbers were, we received in the, since the last update. So we had these in-house, we hadn't put these out because we realized there's a new assay method which is more accurate. So we got to work on that. And so we're putting out the new and the old now as sort of new information into the market. But the new column is the one to watch. And it is much better than before. And that's gonna be important because we're gonna have, there's a whole bunch of samples left to go, which we have put out there in the market already. They're the old assay method. And we are currently re-assing that right now as we speak. So anyway, Matt, I'm rambling. So 3.7 meters here of 62 grams per ton germanium with a meter of 90 grams per ton germanium. Germanium doesn't concentrate very much in the Earth's crust, Matt. So I think capuchee is a good example that the USGS uses as kind of a benchmark for what is a high grade. And there are zinc deposit in the DRC is running 64 grams per ton, if I recall. And that would be considered high grade, right? For these types of deposits. The only other place to get germanium in the Earth's crust is certain coal deposits, right? Certain coal deposits, certain zinc deposits have it. We're blessed in that Ballywire is a zinc discovery that happens to be germanium rich. You know, a lot of them are maybe gallium rich or indium rich or none of the above. We happen to have one that's germanium rich, thankfully.