Felix Gold continues to shine as forecasters tip strong growth for the yellow precious metal

With predictions of strong price growth for gold through to 2024, Felix Gold (ASX: FXG) is in an ideal position for the development of its high-quality Alaskan assets.

Located in the historic Alaskan Fairbanks district, Felix Gold’s Treasure Creek project has all the elements you want in creating a Tier 1 mine – an experienced management team, high-grade ore and significant upside in a world-renowned mining jurisdiction.

With a gold rush coloured past that traces back to the early 1900s, the Fairbanks mining district has become Alaska’s largest producer of gold, earning the title “America’s Klondike.” An estimated 15.4 million ounces of gold, or about one third of all the gold recovered in Alaska, has been won from mineral deposits within 40 kilometres of the town of Fairbanks.

Global hunt unearths golden opportunity

Built from the ground up by a team of world-leading geologists, Felix was created with a goal to create a near-term value pathway for investors.

Felix was the brainchild of the Mine Discovery Fund’s board of geologists who spent 2020 scouring the world for a Tier-1 gold deposit that could be brought into production fast and at low capex.

They soon assembled the 392 square kilometre tenement package not just because it sits in Alaska’s prolific Tintina Belt with its multiple 10Moz-plus deposits, but just as importantly because of its locality right next to an ore-hungry mill that is running out of feed.

This has landed Felix in an enviable strategic position with plenty of gold and a potentially quick and relatively easy road to market.

Market loved the story

After completing a highly successful $10 million IPO and listing on the ASX in January 2022 the Felix team quickly demonstrated their exploration know how with a major gold discovery declared at its Treasure Creek project’s NW Array target.

The exciting prospectivity of the Treasure Creek project was initially unveiled in 2022, when assays returned significant intersections such as 90m at 1.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 32m, including 60m at 1.6g/t gold from 42m.

With those exciting early results in the bank, the company was able quickly establish a global exploration target of between 1.1-3.6Moz of gold.

2023 drilling provides glittering results

A successful 2023 drill campaign has zoomed in on the southern subsection of NW Array and returned significant broad gold intercepts, leaving Felix months away from releasing a maiden resource targeting between 270,000 to 890,000oz of gold for this area alone.

Highlights released in early July 2023 from the latest drilling campaign included results from a round of assays covering a 45 hole, 4,500m resource definition drilling program.

Those holes returned numerous significant intercepts such as 100.5m at 1.14g/t gold from 21.3m, including 47m at 1.7g/t gold from 38.1m.

Another standout assay included 70.1m at 1.6g/t gold from 6.1m, including 7.6m at 6.4g/t gold from 21.3m.

The Alaskan gold explorer released more excellent drill results at the end of July, which included 54.9m at 1.80g/t gold from 1.5m, including 30.5m at 3.02g/t gold from 7.6m and 4.6m at 7.10g/t gold from 19.8m.

The company also recorded intercepts of 53.3m at 1.08g/t gold from 30.5m including 10.7m at 2.55g/t gold from 44.2m.

Maiden resource estimate looming

Felix’ Q4 2023 maiden mineral resource estimate milestone could help put the company on the map with Kinross, owner of the adjacent Fort Knox Mine which is running out of feed.

Both the grade and the near-surface nature of the mineralisation at the NW Array indicate a potential low cost open-pitable resource.

Additionally, the identification of further high-grade north-east trending zones continues to establish the trend Felix has been exploring, while extending it in width and length.

De-risked and accelerated pathway to production

Felix is in a unique position of potentially not needing to invest in building its own production facility and mill. The NW Array Southern Zone area is directly adjacent and less than 20km away from Fort Knox, which produced 291,000oz of gold equivalent in 2022. The mine has a 16 million tonnes per annum mill that is operating at just 55% of capacity and receives a head grade of around 0.7g/t gold.

With an ore-hungry mill, Kinross is actively engaging in M&A to extend the mine life of their Fort Knox mine.

The miner has already shown how serious it is about consolidating the best deposits in the region and in 2020 it forked out approximately $147 million to acquire 70% of another Alaskan gold deposit. The project is expected to generate an extra 640,000 ounces of gold production for Kinross over the life of the mine.

Kinross looking at expansion options

Kinross’ first quarter of 2023 reiterated its strong focus on improving margins in its US operations. Central to this is the Fort Knox mine – and utilising all its infrastructure to its full capacity. Kinross is preparing to bring the Manh Choh deposit online, which involves transporting ore 400km to Fort Knox for processing and comes with a total capital expenditure of nearly $314 million.

Viable deposits that are much closer to the mine and are cheaper to bring into production are a strong focus for Kinross, and Felix Gold is working to prove up a resource that fits Kinross’ requirements.

Felix has repeatedly intersected wide assays that are a considerably higher grade than the ore being processed at Fort Knox and is now only a few months away from releasing their maiden JORC resource.

An additional sweetener for the company is that it has repeatedly observed high-grade antimony – one of the world’s most elusive critical minerals – across the NW Array.

The prospect of antimony is especially noteworthy because the Scrafford Shear antimony mine, which is on Felix’s tenement, was historically the second largest antimony mine in Alaska.