Acadia joins stock market with a fistfull of assets

“I don’t think I’ve seen a junior mining company come to market with such a package of properties.”

That is how Dan Farrel, who has been with Merit Investment Corp. of Toronto for seven years, introduced Acadia Mineral Ventures to some 40 investors in Toronto last week.

The company, formed in 1981 by maritime geologist Avard D. Hudgins and Donald E. Smith of Elliot Lake repute, expects to complete its initial public financing through the Toronto Stock Exchange this week and directors say a $2-million flow-through financing will follow immediately to fund work on some nine gold properties in Nova Scotia.

Once the 600,000-share financing is complete, the company will have 2,891,700 shares outstanding. The issue price is $1.25.

What the company has is a net smelter royalty interest (up to 3%) in the Beaver Dam property in Nova Scotia which Seabright Resources plans to be mining at a rate of 400 tons per day by May. Mr Smith says this could be worth anywhere between $500,000 and $750,000 a year for the next 10 years. Seabright made an offer to buy 90% of Acadia’s 2.5 million shares in August at $1 a share, but Acadia turned the offer down.

Acadia also has a carried 14.5% net profit interest (after payback) in the Elmtree and California Lake gold properties in the Bathurst area of New Brunswick. Elmtree, the more advanced project, is operated by Lacana Mining Corp. with varying interests going to American Oakwood Energy, Sparton Resources, Lynx-Canada Explorations and Silver Sceptre Mines. Drill inferred tonnages are 400,000 tons grading 0.15 oz gold per ton. A rich silver deposit at California Lake, N.B., was discovered by Lacana in September.

Acadia also has a 10% net profits interest in a gold property being worked at the grassroots stage by Campbell Resources near Newcastle, N.B.

Revenues from these properties are a long way off.

But Acadia holds at least two other gold properties in Halifax Cty., N.S., which could be brought to the feasibility stage fairly rapidly (probably in about 18 months with the right financing and a good exploration crew). They are: the Renfrew property, located about a 20-minute drive from Seabright’s mill at Gays River, and the Mooseland property which Mr Hudgins says “is almost the mirror image of the Beaverdam deposit.” He was referring to a slightly overturned anticlinal structure in the host Cambrian slates, flanked by cross- cutting faults and the property’s proximity to a granitic pluton.

Seabright plans to operate the mill at Gays River on a custom milling basis.

Acadia has already booked a number of drills to start work on these properties in January.

The company has seven other gold properties in Nova Scotia.