Aurelius Minerals focused on advancing its Nova Scotia assets down the path to production

Nova Scotia is a top-ranked mining jurisdiction enjoying renewed interest Firm's assets in the province have good infrastructure and access all-year-round Aureus East was last operated in 2018 What Aurelius Minerals does: Aurelius Minerals Inc (CVE:AUL) (OTCMKTS:AURQF) (FRA:1GA) is a gold explorer, which is advancing its flagship Aureus gold properties comprising four assets in mining-friendly Nova Scotia. These assets include the Aureus East mine, which has a 300 tonne per day (tpd) mine and mill - one of only two permitted gold mines and mills in the Canadian province. The company also has the Aureus West, Tangier and Forest Hill properties. Across all four assets, there are 73,000 ounces of gold in the higher confidence indicated category and 354,200 ounces in inferred. Aurelius believes there is extensive resource growth potential, reserve conversion and exploration upside. The company also holds what it calls two district-scale gold projects in the prolific Abitibi greenstone belt in Ontario. These are the 968-hectare Mikwam property, which is adjacent to Hecla's Casa Beradi mine (with 3.75 Moz reserves and resources), and the 12,425-hectare Lipton property, on the Lower Detour trend. The company has experienced management as well as extensive capital markets expertise. It follows a so-called #DefineRefineReEngineer strategy to advance its assets, namely to define (resources), refine resources (into reserves) and re-engineer (the extraction method) into economic and mine studies to maximise efficiency and operations.  How is it doing: Aurelius Minerals started drilling at the Aureus gold project in August last year, announcing an initial 10,000 metre (m) program, with 6,000m of underground at Aureus East (now complete). Concurrently, there was to be 4,000m of surface drilling at Aureus West. Phase one drilling, comprising ten holes, has now been completed at Aureus West and more assays are awaited before a second phase of drilling begins. Notably, in January this year, the group said that three holes at Aureus West had hit 'significant' gold mineralization and new gold horizons to a depth of 500m below surface, which is well below the current resource depth of around 150m. Results included an intercept of 2.5m grading 13.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, including 0.5m grading 46.4 g/t gold. And on March 1, Aurelius revealed underground assays from two holes at Aureus East, which had expanded a high-grade gold zone called Zone 9. With the results, which included 10.5m at a grade of 11.7 g/t gold from a depth of 63m to 73.5m, the firm said it had "laterally expanded the width of the Zone 9 high-grade gold zone". Inflection points: Receipt of more drill assays (lab assays generally have been delayed due to the pandemic) Resource estimate for Aureus East Precious metals moves What the boss says: In Aurelius Minerals'  latest video with Proactive, CEO Mark Ashcroft told Proactive's Steve Darling: "We've just finished Phase One, in fact we will have completed 6,000m of drilling on the East project ... so then we're going to plan out our Phase two and really Phase two is where we want to grow the resource."  Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com