Why Miata Metals Thinks Jons Trend and Big Berg Are One System

Trevor Hall (0:15)

West Africa and South America's Guyana Shield were joined until the Atlantic Ocean split them apart. But they share the same ancient geology, both of those major gold mines from Zizhen's Rosabelle and Newmont's Marion in Suriname to Ashanti in Ghana.

Miata Metals is exploring the South American side. The company is focused on Sela Creek and Nassau projects in Suriname. Highlights include 23.75 meters at 5.73 grams per ton gold at Jons Trend, and 96 meters at 1.41 grams at Big Berg. The company also raised 25.2 million, including 19.9% stake by La Mancha.

With me is CEO Dr. Jaap Verbaas. Now Jaap, in December, your company announced a 25,000 meter drill program, half for donation at Jons Trend, and half for discovery drilling. Let's start with that discovery. You named six targets going into the year. Which targets have delivered and which ones have not?

Jaap Verbaas (1:13)

We so far have hit what we thought was a new discovery at Big Berg in April, 96 meters, I believe, at 1.4 graphs per ton. This is actually really interesting, because this zone is now growing into our original discovery from 2025, turning that broader corridor into a 1.4 kilometer strike length zone of finalization. We are just waiting for some drill holes right in the middle of that, but geologically, we believe that the two are very likely to be connected. And in July, we added a discovery at the Puma target several kilometers away from this corridor with 17 meters at three, just over three grams per ton.

So we're doing quite well on the discovery front. If I say myself, we hit a new zone roughly every 7,000 meters or so, which is exactly what we wanted when we planned our 25,000 meters earlier this year.

Trevor Hall (2:22)

Which results are pending? Like how much right now of the 25,000 meter program are you have you right now? You believe it was about half when you were started. So what so far have you given towards the exploration?

Jaap Verbaas (2:38)

It's been roughly 50-50. Yeah, that's right. So half of it goes into new or goes into delineating discoveries, figuring out their size. And it remains that way. We haven't closed off our existing discoveries along strike or at depth. So they're really growing at a rapid clip, which is exciting to see. And the other half is going into new targets. So the process for that, we have two rigs. They're running continuously. We can explore at Sela Creek year round.

We have one rig that does more of that delineation drilling than you call it, figuring out the size of the targets that we already have discoveries on. And another rig that goes from target to target and does short fences that are, we then wait for assays on just to see if we should come back for another fence, maybe in a slightly different direction, or if we need to add more trenching to that or other surface work before we come back with the drill bit. So that's the discovery process, if you will.

Trevor Hall (3:51)

What's it been like right now for the turnaround?

Jaap Verbaas (3:54)

It's good. We actually, we do have a fair bit pending at this point. So there are drill holes pending from Jons Trend, from Big Berg, from the missing link in between, if you will, which of course is going to be exciting. We've also done some drilling both to the north and south of this main discovery corridor.

I think we, I don't know the exact number, but I think we have, certainly we have several thousand meters that are coming in from the lab quite soon. So I do expect fairly continuous news flow over the next few months here.

Trevor Hall (4:32)

Let's turn to that delineation. Jons Trend, of course, was the other half of the drilling. The goals were to confirm a broad, shallow dipping structural controlled gold system. In your deck, you have the size at about 750 by 300 meters, with a potential strike length of 1 kilometer.

What has this year's drilling added and where is it still open?

Jaap Verbaas (4:56)

I think the main thing of this year is that we have the Big Berg discovery several hundred meters away from Jons Trend and that they appear to be connected.

And so we started with that Jons Trend discovery last year, in September 2025 It was our first discovery and I've been drilling that since. It fairly quickly grew to that 750 meters by 300 meters. But I think the most important thing that investors should know is that if this does continue into Big Berg and that turns into one big system, we're looking at 1.4 kilometers in strike length between 1.3 and 1.4, I believe, in a system that's still open along strike and open to depth. So really a substantial zone of mineralization that we are quite excited about.