Selkirk Copper (TSXV:SCMI) - Fast-Track Minto Restart to Production

Colin Joudrie (0:00)

My name is Colin Joudrie. I'm the CEO and President of Selkirk Copper Mines, Inc.

We are the Yukon's next copper mine. We're advancing a series of studies informed by detailed drilling, resource modeling and mine planning that will allow us to go into production by mid-28. And it's the opportunity that our partners in the Selkirk First Nation are hoping for who are closely aligned with. We are Canada's first publicly traded mining company, with a majority equity interest held by a First Nation.

Crux Investor (0:34)

Colin, we're not met in person. Lovely to see you.

Colin Joudrie (0:37)

It is good to see you.

Crux Investor (0:38)

Yes, we sort of look at each other on screens all the time. But I think this is a great opportunity to meet up here at Beaver Creek.

Colin Joudrie (0:45)

Yeah.

Crux Investor (0:45)

It's busy out there. How have you been faring?

Colin Joudrie (0:48)

It's pretty good. I think we have 55 meetings in the three and a half days, plus the 25 meetings per night.

So far, it's good. There's always a bit of a buzz when you come here. One of the other things that I always find interesting is we get to see people that we should see on the streets of Toronto or London or Vancouver, but we're just too busy. So one of the real opportunities here is to connect with folks who are like-minded and want to see this industry thrive. Right.

Crux Investor (1:19)

Obviously, given the business model that you and I have discussed a few times, this kind of expedited movement to production, mid-28, you can see a certain type of investor, I imagine. What are the questions they're asking you?

Colin Joudrie (1:34)

There's a number of questions that they ask. Normally, it's how are you moving so quickly?

I say that in honesty. So we've been able to drill over 105,000m in the last 12 months on an asset that hasn't seen a drill turn on it in four years.

That's because we've got a plan, we've got a team that can go and execute it and get it done. But what they're more importantly asking is, this market is short copper and it's very short, the quality of copper concentrates that we will produce, 38% copper, very rare in the marketplace. We're doing it on a timeline that allows them to envision the prices we're seeing today for that production. That's pretty rare.

Crux Investor (2:19)

Okay, and we're going to go through a little exercise, well, I'd like to go through a little exercise because there's clearly a team of mine builders, but we just put out a PEA, but the business model is unconventional, conventional thinking is where I describe it, if that makes sense to you.

Colin Joudrie (2:37)

It does.

Crux Investor (2:37)

Because we're not going through a long laborious process. We can skip some of those processes in the full safety that you're doing it the right way. Now, PEA. You put the PEA out on the 22nd. I think I'll deal with this if you don't mind.

We had an unfortunate press release with a slightly wonky headline, which went out from someone and a media company not to be named. Definitely not us. I think that put the jitters in the market a bit.

Colin Joudrie (3:06)

It put the jitters in the market a lot.

It's really interesting. We're all living in a different world in a different time. People are wanting information that they can act on quickly, almost regardless of the quality of the information. I think we got caught up in a little bit of that. I don't think there's any ill intent here. I think it's just a badly written set of articles with some headlines that flagged a sell decision as opposed to a buy decision. It really ran away from us.

It's unfortunate because the timing was intended to support us, but there was a bit of an AI component to the write up, and it really missed some of the key things.

Crux Investor (3:44)

AI kills us in different ways.

Colin Joudrie (3:47)

It's funny because I've got a young group of people who are using AI really well. All I've asked them to do in AI is just tell me how you're asking it the questions, and tell me what you're trying to do, and then when we do get the product of it, make sure I understand it. It's not about whether it produces something wrong. It's whether or not you're controlling the output. So yeah, it's unfortunate. We came into this with a glass half full sort of mentality.

We're not looking to shoot the lights out on any given day, but this is a solid study. It's a solid study that reflects not just the asset itself, but that sort of accelerated timeline, because it's a restart. We're not building from the ground up. We're leveraging over $330 million of above ground investment by prior operators, and we're doing the things that we need to do. We're focusing on the resource, the mine plans, and that integrated start. So, we're really pleased with the study, as a matter of fact. And we think it's also flagged like you should, things you should improve going forward. That's part of the studies.