Great Western Mining (LSE:GWMO) — 2026 Exploration Plan

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the GREAT WESTERN MINING CORPORATION PLC Investor Presentation. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to Executive Chairman, Brian Hall. Brian, good morning, sir. Yes. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for attending this presentation by GREAT WESTERN MINING. I'm Brian Hall. I'm the chairman of the company, as Jake has pointed out.

0:48 I'm with me today is Ed Loy. Ed has recently joined as the CEO of the company. He's his background with us is that we invited him to become a consultant to the company earlier last year when we were involved in a drilling program. He we invited him to look at our assets, prioritize what we had, and give us his opinion. We found him very enthusiastic about our assets, and he's done did some very good work for the for the board. And subsequently, we invited him to join the company as CEO, and very pleased to welcome him to the company. He started on February 1. Ed is a geologist by trade. He has two MSCs in geology. He's associated with Campbell School of Mines. And in his past career, he's launched a a startup exploration company and then successfully sold it on to a larger company. So he has a good track record, and we're very pleased to have him with us. So without further ado, let me pass you over to Ed who will run you through our recent presentation, which we published, which is on our website, and you you'll get the the personal story from from Ed of what we're doing at the moment in Nevada.

1:56 Ed? Thank you, Brian. Yes. Hello to everybody. Yes. Let's run through the presentation. So as we can see on the starting slide, our title with accelerating a portfolio of strategic minerals in a world class mining jurisdiction. So what makes a world class mining jurisdiction like Nevada? Well, Nevada was known as the silver state, but ironically, it has become the gold state being the leading gold producer in The U US since the nineteen eighties, providing around 70% of domestic gold production in The US overtaking Alaska and California.

2:43 Not only gold has well known historical silver mines such as the Comstock Lode and Candelaria and as well as porphyry deposits like the Yarrington deposits in Leon County. So what are the strategic minerals? Well, we'll get into that as we go through the portfolio. And just a disclaimer here, standard. Won't dwell on that for too long. So snapshot. Obviously, quite wordy. I won't drill on this for too much. But, effectively, the key projects that we are looking at in Mineral County, where most of our assets are based, is tungsten.

3:30 Our copper that we've been delineating for years and precious metal opportunities and, of course, situated where we are with its established infrastructure and the mining heritage I was alluding to. So what is the strategy to realize the potential of these assets? Well, number one, tungsten is of interest to us. Not that it's something that we are moving to because it's, you know, or the emperor's new clothes. It's something that we have been aware of for some time. We know that it fits into the mineralization that we've already identified in the Huntoon And Black Mountains area.

4:16 We know that there's great continuity or indications of great continuity. And to supplement our already established m two copper resource, we are keen to add another resource estimates to our stable with a major NRE for tungsten, which brings on to point two, the to assess this corridor scale. Because, of course, it's important, and you'll see this later in the presentation, that this tungsten play is not disparate to everything else we've done. It's actually related geologically. The mineralized drivers are the same. They are similar, not only locally where we are, but, obviously, it's analogous to other tungsten plays in the region, some that are very well known to our investors, I'm sure. And, of course, we have the added insurance of other assets in the company.

5:10 When we look at point three, you know, we have gold shows. We have silver shows. We have the potential to garner value from tailings from historical mines that are within our asset base. And, of course, we want to unlock this defined value. We have strategic partnerships established and ones that we are growing and reinforcing. So what is the market overview? Of course, tungsten, like with many commodities, has been on a tear in terms of pricing. You've seen tungsten breaking through $2,000 per metric ton unit recently. We had 18% growth last week in the price.

5:58 Obviously, this is underpinned by its use in defense and aerospace applications, not only that tooling, silica wafer cutting, obviously, burgeoning use in fusion reactors in the future. But, of course, it was those aforementioned applications that really bolstering the price. Obviously, we have copper and, obviously, the long term metrics for that and the fact that we need to wire up all this in electrification that we're keen to kind of develop. Gold, obviously, you know, store of value appeal and also on a price tear as is as is silver. But, obviously, silver has the added advantage of not just being an investment hedge, but also it has applications in solar panels, for example.

6:49 And, of course, these are all assets that we have well, these are commodities across all of our assets. Location, again, Nevada, always rating rates highly in the Fraser Institute surveys. Again, as I mentioned before, history in gold, silver, and copper production, mining friendly, very transparent mining code, but also high environmental standards as well, hence why it always ranks quite highly. Mineral County, where we are, of course, as a as an added focus into Nevada with its skarn hosted tungstons, its historical gold and silver mines, obviously, the sill gold mines that have come on stream recently like Isabella Pearl and Santa Fe.

7:39 And, of course, outside of mining, you have Tesla's Gigafactories being proposed within within within the county. And Hawthorne itself, the military town, has been earmarked as a stockpiling zone for strategic and critical minerals. Okay. So let's look at the current hot topic within our asset base, which is the Pinecrow Defender. This 1.2 kilometer corridor between these two old historical tungsten workings that did produce tungsten in during the Second World War for a limited time. It wasn't that they were mined out. It's just that, obviously, their short term production was was ended by the end of that kind of conflict.

8:27 The grades that we came across with the channel cutting that I oversaw in December last year, we we garnered we gathered grades similar to other well known tungsten plays in the regions with an added silver credit, which is all very important. And, of course, with these numbers from these channel cuts, we're very keen to obviously get in and drill. And, obviously, even before the drilling, we're keen to do some more trenching, which will help with our news flow, which we're hoping to kind of release within the next few months. And, of course, this is the timeline for it. Just some context here. If you look at the maps, there's there's there in the top is the state map of Nevada showing the well known mineralized trends.

9:23 Obviously, Carlin and the Getschel trends, which are obviously more related to gold. And then you've got the Walker Lane Belt, which itself is linked to gold, but also to porphyry coppers and and tungsten hosted skarns. Also, you'll see the proximity on the mineral county map next to it of, you know, what projects we have in our vicinity as the aforementioned Santa Fe and Isabela Mine mines, the famous old Candelaria Silver Mine, and our gold assets at OMCO and our copper project East Side and, of course, the Huntoon projects and all of the Defender Pinecrow M 2. And you can just see there that a lot of these are clustered. So the Pinecrow Defender M 2 West Huntoon are regionally related.

10:12 You can see in the inset map at the bottom without dwelling on this too much. You can see that in on the east side or the right side of the map, you can see the section which links Pinecrow and Defender mine, and the inset into that shows where we're we're planning to drill within within the next few months. But, of course, this is the first fence that we want to do, a first fence somewhere between 501,000 meter strike. But we can also see that there's a there's a longer trend here of tungsten showings. But what's great is that the geology and the structure supports the potential continuity of this for a full three kilometers all the way down to our Skarn hosted copper resource at M 2.

11:03 So there's a real potential here after we delineate our tight fence on the tungsten that this could be an even bigger tungsten occurrence with the with the bolt on preexisting copper play at M 2. I must add to that M 2 is also open. That's got potential for growth as well, but we don't think we can get around to that at this field season, but this is something that we'll be be willing to expand in the future. And, again, if we look at the wider Hantoon area, you can see on the map on the right hand side, you can see the M 2 resource in the Northeast corner, which was in the Southwest corner in the previous map. So you can see that where the kind of local trends are. You can see at West Antune M4, which are other kind of copper and gold showings.

11:59 Again, you can see the M2 resource. We delineated ten years ago, which was 4,300,000 tons of point 45% copper. Of course, this is still open. M4 is another an area of interest, although we won't be looking at that this year. West Hamptoon, obviously, is very interesting to us in terms of its recent gold and silver fertility that we identified from last year's drilling, and we're keen to do some small work on that this year. Obviously, within budget, we won't be drilling that this year, but we will continue some work upon that as we're delineating the tungsten at Defender Pine Crow. More detail on West Tuntoon here. Obviously, these were the these were the announcements from earlier this year on the gold and silver showings. And what was interesting was that what we thought was gonna be more mineralized in copper was not as what as it was not as as expect expected, but we were very surprised at the fertility of the of the granite to the point the Crown Point granite, and that's what we're keen to assess more this year as a sort of side a side project, but we can do that concurrently.

13:22 And, of course, we have the Olympic Gold project, which is on the other side of GAPS within Mineral County, so in the East Side Of Mineral County. And, again, this is somewhere that we've been investigating for some time, looking at extensions, notably the rhyolite dome that we we'll be we've been testing last year. Historically, Onco was returning very favorable grades of around 25 to 30 grams per ton. And you can see some of the areas that have potential. Yes. We did rhyolite dome. Yes. There's more to do there. There was not necessarily the best results from there, but, of course, we do have good results from many of the other outliers around OMCO, including Trafalgar Hill.

14:14 And we have gold in the tailings that, of course, we have been earmarking as future side revenue. Other side other projects that we have, East Side mine, a porphyry copper, which is 18 kilometers southeast of the Huntoon copper projects that I outlined earlier, the mineral jackpot silver play that we drilled back in '22 with some pretty good intercepts, skinny, but reasonable grade. The ton group, more epithermal gold veins supported by evidence of the old workings. M five prospect, which is sort of similar to the m four projects in the Huntoon Valley and the Rock House Golden Court occurrence with some reasonable intercepts. As you can see there, 1.5 meters at eight eight grams per ton gold.

15:17 Of course, interest to a lot of people is our milling operation, which is a planned JV. Of course, lots to be talked about there. I think Brian will in in fill you on that later if you have any questions on that. So, yes, tailings that were identified at the Olympic or OMCo were reasonable. You know, 1.6 to three grams per ton 1.6 grams per ton gold with three grams per ton silver credit. And, of course, this is something that we're we're keen maybe as a a a near term revenue driver, but, of course, that does need full commissioning. There are some challenges to commissioning these types of mineralized occurrences in Nevada.

16:08 You know, gold is fine grained in Nevada. It was the reason why it was overlooked by the early pioneers on their way out to California. But, of course, now we know with with the larger open cast operations and heap leach that, you know, this there's so much potential for gold in in Nevada. Again, here is an overview of the team. You can see Brian there, obviously, myself. Max and Robert have been with the company for a long time as well, and we are supported by our our our consultant QP, doctor Lawrence Carter, who's a well known and worldwide renowned porphyry systems expert. And, of course, this is the mineralizing driver to a lot of our incurrences from the copper, the gold, and the skarn.

16:57 So all related mineralized systems are related. Again, our board, Banjoo Hay, Alastair Ford, and, you know, give us a good balance of expertise and market knowledge and experience. Again, so here's the investment case just in a nutshell, multi metal portfolio, copper, gold, silver, tungsten. Tier one location. I don't need to kinda sell Nevada. We know that it's a top tier mining jurisdiction. Yes. We're in the right place at the right time, aligning with America First Metal strategy, where the American government has been keen to reshor production and processing.

17:44 And this is not just the Trump government. This has been something that previous governments have been supporting as well. So it's has that long term political support for reshoring production and mine mineral processing. We have funding in place in place to deliver the drilling and the initiative at this maiden resource estimate on tungsten this year. Is something that we want to deliver by the fall, and, hopefully, I've shown that we have an experienced team, and we can combine our technical strengths to to deliver this. Okay. So and here are a list of contacts. So if you want to reach out to myself or Brian, please do so. Our emails are here, and that concludes the presentation.

18:34 So Perfect. Perfect, guys. Zoom. So any questions you may have, I think Absolutely. Information on that now. Brian, Ed, that's great. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboards. Brian, Ed, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions. And thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But guys, at this point, if I may just hand back you to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. If And I pick up from you at the end, that'd be great.

19:21 Thank you. Jake, thank you very much. The the way we'll do it is we'll we'll individually take questions. So Ed will handle some. I'll handle the others. And thank you all very much for submitting the questions. Ed, may would you like to start with the Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll I'll I'll take question. Yes. So okay. I'll take this one. So over recent years, you've asked shareholders for activity targeting gold, then switch back to copper, then gold, and now tungsten. What makes the tungsten project the priority rather than it being different to all the other projects? Well, this is something that I think, hopefully, I I presented earlier in the fact that it's not that we've dropped everything and moved to tungsten.

20:11 These are mineral systems that are connected, Hopefully, from the maps that I showed that the tungsten occurrence is proximal to our copper that we've been working on for quite some years. Why we prioritize tungsten? Probably because, yes, it's doing well price wise, but also I really like the look of the occurrence. We're talking about skarn hosted tungsten here. What that means is that you get not necessarily the highest grade tungsten, but you get broad consistent tungsten mineralization over wider intercepts.

20:57 So in terms of minability, it's realistic. In terms of gaining a consistent mineral resource estimate, you can you can do that. It's a lot easier to identify and and and chase and highlight a scan occurrence than it would be for less predictable vein hosted mineralization like epithermal gold. This is why I'm keen to go and drill it, not only in the environment where tungsten is riding high, but the fact that the nature of the mineralization is is present at surface and is analogous to regional tungsten glaze as well. Good. Thanks, Ed. The next question we have, any information in regards to the mill for tailings recovery? Will this be an early revenue stream? I'll deal with this one if I may as Okay. I'm the the kind of author of the the mill program for your time, Ed.

21:57 The the mill I appreciate that this this mill is is a frustration for a lot of shareholders because it's, it's it's been on the cards for a long time, and it's had a lot of stop go on it, which is very unsatisfactory. And I held my hand up and say that I'm probably, were was overoptimistic about how quickly we could or definitely was overoptimistic about how quickly we could achieve this. This was based on things which seemed reasonable at the time, and things have taken longer than they should have done. Now the situation with the mill is this. We have built a very interesting mill. It's a very successful construction. It is in a perfect place. We have lots all the ingredients are there for a a first class job. We have got a permit to produce a gravity a gravity circuit, which we were told by lawyers would take a very long time.

22:49 We were then we were told it would take six months. In fact, took about a year and a half. So we we have actually achieved a permit from the from the the environmental department of the state, which is the important permit. The the importance of these permits in in a in a state like Nevada is that you don't interfere with the water table, and the the the whole water situation is is critical to it, and we've actually done that. So that that is all there. The mill is is built, but not commissioned. Now why is it not commissioned? Well, the really because we got to a situation where we didn't want to have a stop go situation, and we were likely to have a stop go situation had we continued. Once you start producing a mine, you are then you then fall into a totally different category of company. You suddenly become under the mining regulations, and everybody is on your back at that stage, and you better have everything working really well. The situation we have is we we haven't had a lot of a lot of personnel to do this. Our partner is a is an excellent construction.

23:55 He has an excellent construction outfit. Doesn't really have the personnel to dedicate it to it to it full time. So we had the the risk of starting it, stop, start, stop, start, which just is not going to work. And we felt that had we continued to to to to work it on on that as planned with a with a start, say, about a year ago, we would have stopped again, and then we would have had all sorts of problems. And the solution we believe is that the mine needs the I'm sorry. The mill needs to be on a larger scale. It needs a a some more capital expenditure, and it needs a really good team of people to come in and concentrate on the commissioning and keep keep working on the commissioning until it's until it's done. Now we think that a joint venture and an outside financing would be ideal. We have been reluctant to go back to our shareholders for more money on this because we've already spent roughly $500,000 on it, and we would like to go back for more until we be could be absolutely sure we have a solution.

24:58 The solution we're now working on is a joint venture with another company, and we are in discussions with another company who would produce the money to to develop it. They would also produce some of their own feedstock, and at the same time, they would either produce or find a a commissioning and completion team to do it. I'm very sorry it's taking so long. I can't give you a date as to when it'll come on stream, but it's there. It's an asset of the company, and it it is not forgotten even though not a lot has happened on it. So I can just again apologize it's taking so long, but it is a a live project of the company. I hope that answers your question. Next question, I think And then the OTC question might Yes. Yes. Indeed. Indeed. The next question is a question on the OTC. Do you have any intentions to dual list on the OTC following the success GMAT have had since they did? I can answer the the question much more easily than the last one.

25:56 The simple answer is, in a word, yes. And on that, I'll pass you on to to the next question, which is how does your tungsten potential compare with other tungsten developers in Nevada or the wider US? And I'm sorry. I'll I'll I'll I'll this one. Yeah. Do the two if you wouldn't mind, Ed. Well, yes. I see I see these. Yeah. Double act isn't always easy. Well, as I mentioned before, there were standalone tungsten occurrences, but, of course, these are the ones that happened to be open cuts for those two years during the war years. The Skarn occurrence that hosts this tungsten is currently untouched, but has a continued strike that we're willing to and intending to both do additional channel cuts and, obviously, to drill as I outlined earlier.

26:52 And that leads on to how does that compare? Well, again, a lot of the other tungsten occurrences, either previous mines or new projects in Nevada are SCAN hosted, are Shea light hosted tungsten in Garnet SCANS. The underlying geology is is pretty similar, or you you could even stretch to say that it's the same. But, obviously, there are some local variations. And, of course, some of those are are in our favor. For example, some of the tungsten scan occurrences in Nevada happen to have a lot of molybdenum, which you would think on on on the face of it would be a bonus, but actually in mineral processing, it's an it's an issue. You don't necessarily want molybdenum substituting into your shelite.

27:40 You need to have a clean shelite, and we have a clean shelite from, well, from the trenching assays that we've had to date. Our molybdenum and other deleterious elements are low. So if we were to increase our volume of shea light and the mineralogy is consistent, we would have a pro a an amenable material for processing, which is highly encouraging. In terms of grade, a lot of these tungstons rarely exceed 1% w o three o o over over given meters. These these these deposits tend to rate in the sort of point two to point 5% w o three, but over appreciable widths.

28:36 And not only that, not only are they minable, open pitable, it's also a known processing route. You know, it's been known for a long time how you effectively can win a tungsten concentrate from a Sheolite host. So the flow sheets aren't complicated. Yes. They need some fine tuning and optimization, but it it's a known route. This isn't a complicated or it's not a complicated host. If you can mine it out, it can be processed. So this is what's encouraging about us being where we are, especially in not only a state, but a country that's keen to reassure processing and stockpiling of minerals. We're in the right place at the right time. Good. What other questions do we have? No.

29:27 What catalyst should investors expect over the next twelve months from drilling assays or resource estimates? I think probably you you this is one for you if you wouldn't mind. Yes. So catalysts. Yes. What are the drivers through the year? Well, I can tell you that we're gonna be on the ground next month. We are doing a very detailed surface mapping exercise over the planned drilling area, but also a wider mapping and geophysics survey as well so that we can test this corridor and prepare it ahead of initial trenching exercise so we can do more machine cuts so we can release some news over the next few months ahead of the drilling campaign that hopefully will get underway in June or July this year. And, obviously, then return of assays within to by late summer and a planned MRE release within the fall. That's the the structure.

30:24 In between, we can keep the the pans boiling at some of the other projects, such as the West Ham two delineation of the of the fertile gold silver granite is something that we want to be doing at the same time. Just to reiterate that, yes, we are focusing on this, but, yes, we are still keeping the other projects going, whether that's discussions with JV partners on the other projects. But we are in terms of operations and and field operations, the tungsten will be taking priority. And, hopefully, we'll be releasing these news quite regularly up into the up into the MRE release. Ed, the the next question I'll take is with multiple projects, how does management prioritize which assets to to advance versus farm out or joint venture?

31:11 Well, keenness to prioritize assets is the reason that we took on Ed in the first place back in about summer last summer because we wanted somebody actually to review this for us. And in fact, he did kind of prioritize our assets. Obviously, we have a lot of ground, and, there's a lot to look at. And he had a limited time, but he did an excellent job on that. And I guess that's how we came to prioritize the tungsten really on the basis of the work he did for us before he joined the company full time. As far as farm art or joint ventures go, farm arts and joint ventures, they they happen or they they they don't happen. It's farming out assets is is not a straightforward business.

31:58 We we're open to bigger partners coming to our assets. We've talked to a number of people about our copper potential over the years. We've got quite a lot of interest, and we still are in ongoing discussions which go on and on with a number of people. So we're always willing to look at far more opportunities. In the case of the tungsten, though, we think that we can take this this is manageable within our own resources, and we think we we can take this to the next stage without having to bring in any any any partners. We think we can do this a 100% for the time being. Doesn't mean we always will depends how big a project becomes. But for the time being, we're not planning to farm up tungsten. Our other assets, we're always willing to talk to people if the deal is reasonable, but we're not planning to give any good assets away for nothing. So that I think is Yeah. Yeah.

32:44 I think that's good. Another question here. Please, could you give more detail regarding your finances? Are you fully funded for exploration work in 2026? Yes. We are well funded. We were able to raise 3,200,000 recently, and we are going to be as careful with the spend as possible. I'm keen that the company does not run out of money and that we don't have to return to the market for further raising for the foreseeable future. We want to deliver this MRE. If the MRE is successful, I'm also keen to get an initial assessment to SK thirteen hundred compliancy, effectively technical report, if we get the MRE we want to, which hopefully we can.

33:31 Yes. We are conscious about spend that we had done before, and I'm keen that we are cost effective going forward, and we are comfortable going forward for the time being. Okay. There's a question here. Is there the potential to process tungsten or at plants in the region which would enable a quick route to open pit production? Could ore sorting technology be used to upgrade the ore to reduce transport costs? Can you answer that one, Ed? Absolutely. So there are quite a few ore sorting routes for for Sheelite. Of course, we're also keen to see how some of the more advanced projects are coming along. You know, we don't know what the chance are for possible mill toll processing.

34:19 That would be sensible. Obviously, we're keeping an eye on that. For the time being, we're focused on getting this initial MRE. We are looking at how we can maximize we because I'm very keen about metallurgical immunability. It's something that I've really been interested in for a long time. It's known as a geometallurgical approach. It's one of the reasons why I'm so keen on on on the tungsten scans is the fact that there's no point delineating a big deposit if you can't win the ore minerals. So that's what I like about this is because it has been proven before. The process is actually called the Tempaiute process. So named after a tungsten mine down in Southern Nevada that process very similar ores.

35:06 And, of course, this is the natural route for what we would what we would we would do. Yeah. A question here, what plans are there for a possible JV for copper development, which has been suggested many times? Well, our plans are that we are continuously looking for joint venture partners. We're fairly confident that we will achieve them in time. Working with bigger companies is never in mineral exploration, working from with bigger companies is never a fast process. We are in touch with a number of people, and I'm confident we will be able to achieve some some progress in this respect. Another question here. Have you explored grants from the government like other projects in the area?

35:51 Yes. This is something that we're very keen to follow-up, but, of course, many of these available grants, you would actually need something tangible to move it forward. So that's why we're so keen to deliver an initial MRE to SK thirteen hundred compliancy, and then we can really motor forward because, of course, we are right in that sweet spot. Good. Well, I think that's that that is all the questions we're really able to answer here. There's a couple of questions about the mill, which I think we've already dealt with as best we can in the the opening question about the mill. So thank you very much for your questions. I really appreciate your time. Yes. Thanks. I think we will probably be finding some more questions online in due course, and we'll do our best to answer those. So if you have been listening, thank you. And we hope to take this company forward and give you some pro make some serious progress this year on our exploration efforts. Thank you. Thank you all. Perfect. Brian, Ed, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? You will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations.

37:06 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of GREAT WESTERN MINING CORPORATION PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all. Thank you. Thank you.