Benjamin & Pabineau Property Acquisitions

Written by Mark Fields, President & CEO

On August 13th, 2013 Geodex announced the acquisition of two new projects, Benjamin and Pabineau. Both projects are located in northern New Brunswick. These are described in the news release of August 13th, 2013. I’d like to describe the process Geodex goes through in identifying and acquiring new projects.

Geodex tries to focus on drilling programs as this is generally the exploration stage when significant shareholder value can occur. Thus ideally on each of the properties we acquire we will already have a clear idea of where the drill targets may be, the type of work required to determine where drill holes should be located, and the results we need to undertake a drill program.

Geodex continually considers new properties. These new properties may result from internal research and field work we do, suggestions from industry people we say in contact with regularly, and property submissions from prospectors.  We believe prospectors are a great source of new properties as they are constantly working properties they have, are in the field to identify new areas or new mineralization and regularly come up with new ideas.

In the case of both the Benjamin and Pabineau properties Geodex has done agreements with well respected New Brunswick prospectors/industry professionals. Geodex has known these individuals for many years and when we made the decision to acquire some new properties, both Benjamin and Pabineau were on our “short” list of about 10 properties that we had identified over the past year as being of particular interest. In a case like this we then did some further internal due diligence on the technical attributes of the properties. Dave Martin, our VP of New Brunswick Operations spearheads this effort. Also closely involved at different stages were Jack Marr and Jack Patterson, two of our geologist directors, as well as myself.

Wayne Carroll (right) and Mark Fields inspecting a boulder with molybdenite mineralization that Wayne discovered on his Pabineau property which Geodex has optioned to purchase.

We then contacted the prospectors for further information. In the case of Pabineau we contacted Wayne Carroll, a long time successful prospector. In the case of the Benjamin Property we dealt with three prospector/entrepreneurs who work together: Dick Mann, Norm Pitre and Roland Lovesey.  All three have been involved successfully in the exploration industry for many years. Of note, Dick Mann was also closely involved in the early exploration (1970s and 1980s) on the Sisson Tungsten – Molybdenum Project in central NB.  Geodex acquired this in 2004 and advanced it through to a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment and ultimately joint ventured and sold it to Northcliff Resources Ltd., which is now advancing it towards mine construction.

We had some further back and forth discussions regarding further due diligence and acceptable terms done through phone calls and emails with both prospector groups. A property visit is always an important step, even if all the data is robust and from reliable sources. Dave and I did that for both Benjamin and Pabineau in late July and at the same time had the opportunity to meet with the prospectors to see if we could find suitable terms for both parties as we had done all the due diligence excepting a final review to ensure we had not overlooked any key factors.

Dave Martin on the Benjamin Property

Once we have all satisfied ourselves that the terms are suitable and there is nothing fundamental we have overlooked, we signed a letter of intent detailing the precise terms and obligations. And shortly after that Geodex issued a news release describing the properties and terms.