The gold rally heartened investors who sought to protect their portfolios against a new decline in the financial market. Considered one of the world's main value reserve currencies, the precious metal is always remembered—and fêted—during crises as a reliable investment safe haven in times of fear, especially when combined with the weakening of the dollar.
This was the scenario that wound up spotlighting gold in 2020. To save economies handcuffed by measures to combat the pandemic, the central banks of the U.S., Europe and Japan poured trillions of dollars into the markets. The fiscal measures, added to uncertainties about corporate recoveries upon the resumption of economic activities, led to the metal becoming one of the major surprises of the market in this insane year.
With the price of gold close to the historic level of US $2,000 per ounce—an unimaginable record a year ago—mining companies both are enabling more complex projects and seeing profit margins soar as the value of the metal rises.
Makara Mining (CSE:MAKA) fits precisely into this landscape of companies ready to surf on the wave of sky-high gold prices. The company has two projects in Canada, located in known production areas with the potential to extract tons of gold.
The metal typically is exploited in areas that require extremely complex logistics operations, as it mostly is carried out in remote regions around the planet such as the Gobi Deserts (located between China and Mongolia), and Australia's vast desert lands, as well as the isolated and icy Canadian Northwest. These are areas where neighboring cities are hundreds of kilometers distant and the climate is uncomfortable, often compared to that of Mars.
So, for gold miners, finding competent, experienced and willing people to work in such hostile environments is as important an asset as identifying a good productive vein. The evolution of prospecting technology and machinery cannot replace the brilliant mind of a person with the right skills and knowledge to make the correct decisions on behalf of the business.
Makara Mining has achieved such a valuable addition, taking on board Grand Hendrickson as president and CEO as of last year. His experience of over 30 years in the mining sector was crowned with the development of the Ovu Tolgoi mine in the middle of Mongolia's inhospitable Gobi Desert.
The adventurous-minded executive was Ivanhoe Mines Mongolia's chief geophysicist, facing a workplace environment battered by sandstorms and intense cold reaching minus 40 degrees – with the nearest road 400 kilometers away.
For Hendrickson, it was a challenge that lasted 16 years, during which he helped design and build the mine that will be the world's largest and most expensive gold and copper production facility.
With this résumé, it is no surprise that Makara identified in Hendrickson a person with the ideal mix of expertise and experience to cope with the challenge of exploiting gold mines in the isolated Yukon Province on the Canadian/Alaska border.
The Rude Creek mine covers 4,000 acres in the middle of the Dawson Range gold district. Prospecting in the area has revealed many geological similarities with nearby lands where productive veins have been identified.
Development of projects by competitors shows that the area has the potential to be a large producing zone, estimated at more than US $25 billion in gold reserves.
With the Rude Creek project, Makara is sitting on a fortune of the precious metal and forecasts that it could mine the gold at a global cost of US$ 575 an ounce. This represents a splendid profit margin with the market valuing the metal at close to US $2,000 an ounce.
In addition to the isolated Rude Creek project, Makara also has buried treasure in its Kenora project, located in the northern Ontario Province about 200 km east of Winnipeg, Canada. It covers more than 800 hectares of land and contains 40 mines. The Canadian Pacific Railway crosses the land, as do highways, transmission lines and pipelines in a mining region that has been exploited since 1894.
Learn more about Makara Mining and gold mining opportunities here.