Aranjin Resources

Overview

Copper’s surprising performance in 2022 makes many market watchers expect its prices to remain high and supply to get tighter in the coming decades.

While China is already looking to expand its exposure to copper supply, experts predict China will source a large portion of its copper supply from Belt and Road countries like Mongolia.

Mongolia has one of the best up-and-coming mining economies in the world, with an estimated $1 to $3 trillion dollars in mineral wealth and a combined billions of proven resources in copper, coal, iron and other metals. With current exploration and mining licenses accounting for less than 5 percent of the geological survey, it’s clear Mongolia presents investors and mining companies with a largely untapped source of high-demand metals.

Aranjin Resources (TSXV:ARJN) is a Toronto-based mining exploration and resource company operating in Mongolia, with particular focus on copper. The combination of the company’s strong leadership team as well as its work in the untapped, but mineral-rich Mongolia puts Aranjin Resources in a potential position to greatly profit off its operations.

Aranjin Resources currently has two active mining projects, with majority shares in both of the projects.

The first is the Bayan Undur Project, located in Bayan Undur Soum of Bayankhongor Province. The Bayan Undur project consists of four mining licenses issued for a 30-year period and has had $10 million in previous exploration already utilized.

The second is the Victory Discovery, showing significant copper and nickel anomalies at ION Energy’s flagship Baavhai Uul, located in the infrastructure-rich Sukhbaatar Province and a mere 24 kilometers from the Chinese border.

Initial auger geochemical drilling has been completed with 814 holes, at the Victory Discovery, with results up to 1,252 parts per million (ppm) copper and 494 ppm nickel in weathered gabbroic clays, under very shallow alluvial cover.

Beyond geography, there are several reasons why Aranjin Resources is a potentially attractive option for investors. Its management team is near unrivaled with respect to mining operations in Mongolia, with members of the team having been involved in Hunnu Coal (which achieved an exit price of $500 million) and Steppe Gold (Mongolia’s top gold producer).

Aranjin entered into a term sheet agreement for an exploration joint venture with ION Energy (TSXV:ION,OTC:IONGF) granting one another reciprocal exploration rights on their respective exploration licenses within Mongolia. According to a press release, both ION and Aranjin will leverage one another's expertise in their respective metals, with Aranjin being granted a right to explore ION's properties for base metals (including copper, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt and associated metals), and ION being granted a right to explore Aranjin's properties for lithium.

In 2022, Aranjin Resources completed an initial program of 6-meter deep auger geochemical drilling at the Baavhai Uul Copper Project in southern Mongolia, in which it holds an 80 percent interest. The work resulted in the significant copper nickel Victory Discovery that has become an active project for Aranjin, with clear similarities to large copper nickel occurrences in northern China, including Jinchuan.

Company Highlights

• Aranjin Resources is a Canadian company operating in Mongolia with particular focus on emerging copper projects.
• Aranjin Resources’ main focus currently is on:
  • The Victory Discovery: Aranjin has an 80 percent interest in this highly prospective copper nickel deposit, found at ION Energy’s Baavhai Uul Project.

• The Bayan Undur Project,located in Bayan Undur Soum of Bayankhongor Province. This project has significant prior work, including but not limited to hundreds of drill holes and a ground magnetic survey that covered the entire area.

• The company features a proven management team with a successful track record in mining in Mongolia.
• Aranjin entered into a joint venture agreement with ION Energy for reciprocal exploration rights on their respective exploration licenses within Mongolia.

Key Projects

Bayan Undur Project

The Banyan Undur project, located in Bayan Undur Soum of Bayankhongor Province, consists of four mining licenses, with an issuance period of thirty years, and over 2,773 hectares of land.

Project Highlights

• Historical Analyses: There have been $10 million and thousands of geochemical and laboratory analyses in previous project work.
• Ground Magnet Survey: A ground magnetic survey covered the entire project area, at a distance of 125.2 meters total.
• Geochemical Sampling: 1,973.52 cubic meters of trenching with 137 channel samples, 57,446.8 meters (546 drill holes) and RC drilling with 14,215 core samples.

Victory Discovery

Aranjin Resources completed an initial program of six-meter deep auger geochemical drilling at the Baavhai Uul Copper Project in southern Mongolia in which it holds an 80 percent interest. The work has highlighted a significant copper nickel discovery.

Highlights

• Results up to 1,252 ppm copper and 494 ppm nickel in weathered gabbroic clays.
• The copper nickel anomaly at Victory remains open and extensional auger geochemical drilling will soon commence.
• Ground magnetic geophysics has now been completed across Victory and other copper nickel anomalies on the project.
• The copper nickel anomaly at Victory is interpreted to be hosted in the upper highly weathered zone of a large 2.5 kilometers x 1.5 kilometers differentiated gabbroic sill.
• Clear similarities to large copper nickel occurrences in northern China, including Jinchuan.
• Potentially a new copper-nickel province with over 25 copper-nickel anomalies highlighted in auger geochemistry and ground magnetics across the project.

The Victory Discovery is one of approximately 25 copper nickel discoveries on the BU Copper Project associated with ultramafic and mafic intrusives and is only the first to be followed up by 50 x 50 meter auger geochemical drill hole spacing.

Management Team

Matthew Wood - Executive Chairman

Matthew Wood has 30 years of global industry experience in mining and commodities investments. Wood was the founder of Hunnu Coal Limited, which sold for ~A$500 million (2011). He was also the chairman of the TSX main board listed Steppe Gold (TSX:STGO). Wood was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, the highest state honor that can be awarded to a non-citizen of Mongolia.

Ali Haji - President and CEO

Ali Haji jointly serves as CEO and director of ION Energy, a lithium brine explorer in Mongolia and is proudly a member of the family of companies that includes Steppe Gold, Mongolia’s premier gold producer. Haji has over 13 years of international experience, including asset management, risk analysis and program governance. He serves as director of Antler Hill Mining Ltd and as advisor to ATMA Capital Markets. He holds a Bachelor of Sciences from the University of Western Ontario.

Jeremy South - Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director

Jeremy South has over 35 years of experience in M&A, capital markets and private equity in Europe, North America and Australia, including senior positions in investment banking at Deutsche Bank, NatWest Markets and Deloitte. For 10 years ended December 2016, South was Global Leader, Mining M&A Advisory at Deloitte. Based in Beijing for four years, he advised leading Asian trading houses and financial investors in mining M&A, financing and strategy and he counted some of Asia’s largest companies as clients. He worked extensively in Mongolia over the past 8 years.

Solongo Gunsendorj - Executive Director

Solongo Gunsendorj is a Mongolian national with considerable experience in the resources sector across a range of commodities including copper, gold, coal, iron and hydrocarbons. Gunsendorj is an executive at boutique Mongolian investment firm Garrison Capital Development (GCD). She currently acts as a corporate secretary of Steppe Gold Ltd, a Mongolian precious metals company listed on the TSX.

Bataa Tumur-Ochir - Director

Bataa Tumur-Ochi is currently the president and CEO of Steppe Gold Ltd, a Mongolian precious metals company. Under his guidance, Steppe Gold was awarded the “Best Investment of the Year Award” from the Ministry of Mining and Heavy Industry and Mineral Resource and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia in 2019. Tumur-Ochir is also executive director of Ion Energy LLC.

Luis Azevedo - Director

Luis Azevedo is a resource industry professional with over 30 years of international experience. With degrees in both law and geology, Azevedo is the current managing partner at FFA Legal Ltd., a legal firm located in the City of Rio de Janeiro – founded by him focused solely on assisting natural resources companies.

Azevedo was the former executive director of companies such as Talon Ferrous, Harvest Minerals, Jangada Mines, Avanco Resources. Currently on his second mandate as the CEO of ABPM – Brazilian Mining Prospectors Association, Azevedo has been nominated as the “National Explorer of the Year” in 2017, and was also pointed out by the Global Mining Observer as one of the three most prestigious miners in Brazil in the year of 2019.

Max Jahn - Director

Max Jahn is currently the managing director at R&R Venture Partners, an early stage VC fund in New York, where he works with entrepreneurs and founders to grow their businesses and explores investment opportunities in the US and Israel, primarily in media and technology.

Before assuming his current position in June 2016, Jahn held a dual role as a VC investor at the RSL Family Office and CFO of the Neue Galerie New York, a museum for Austrian and German Art in NY where Max also oversaw HR and IT.