5 minute read
Live Ribble Valley Issue 136 October 2022
BUSINESS HOUR
Ribble Valley-based James Knowles is executive chairman of First Class Metals, a company that focuses on the exploration for precious and base metals in Ontario, Canada. Photography: Kirsten Platt
Ontario in Canada is considered to be one of the top global destinations in the mineral exploration sector. Specifically, the Hemlo ‘camp’ is a proven world class location for gold and base metal exploration. This geological terrain has a large number of ongoing exploration projects, among them is First Class Metals that owns seven areas covering 180km 2 .
A banker for three decades, James Knowles began his career at Barclays in Clitheroe and stayed with the bank until leaving in 2021 to work full time for First Class Metals, a company that was formally founded earlier this year by James and business partner Ayub Bodi.
“I had a long-standing interest in investing in UK small cap resource explorers with operations like FCM from when a colleague introduced me to the way the markets worked in the mid 1990’s,” recalls James.
“This interest developed into a successful series of investments over the coming years and a good understanding of the operations of metal exploration projects.”
During his time working for Barclays in Preston, James met Ayub, whose business connected owners of oil, gas and metal exploration properties to buyers. The pair kept in touch over the years and as James explains, they had many conversations about procuring land for exploration: “During lockdowns we discussed how, with reasonable levels of research, you could start to create a portfolio of physical mineral leases or outright ownership.”
James and Ayub decided to create a partnership and set about acquiring land that was prospective for metal exploration.
“The main criteria we had was the land had to be in a safe jurisdiction – one which gave you security of tenure within a proven well-established legal system.”
After reviewing many areas across Europe and the Americas they homed in to Canada with a particular liking for Ontario.
“Ayub’s industry contacts got us in touch with several local industry players and with their help we acquired our first small ‘property’ in January 2021 which was about 7km 2 in size and located about 20km north of the world mining giant, Barrick’s Hemlo Williams gold mine,” explains James. With the company now formed, the partners were keen to grow it and acquired further land in the wider area known as the Schreiber-Hemlo Greenstone Belt.
It was around this time that James would need to quit his job with Barclays to focus on FCM with the aim of getting the company listed so they could raise the funds needed to develop their exploration projects.
“At that stage we had invested a substantial amount of our own personal funds but exploration for metals is an expensive game, and we needed funds to see the true potential of FCM.”
In the interim Palladium One Inc, which owned property neighbouring the small piece of land FCM had first acquired, had started to drill and subsequently hit a high-grade nickel deposit around 20km east of FCM’s location.
“There was a lot of industry interest in the area and a staking rush ensued which resulted in all the vacant land around us being acquired by others.
“Palladium One Inc approached us to acquire a working interest into the very first property we claimed. This was a big event for us – even though it was only a small piece of a large land-holding, it validated our model.”
Alongside the progress on the ground, the partners needed to get FCM, which was still a private entity, fit for listing in London.
It was at this stage FCM brought eminent geologist Marc Sale on board. He had a background in metal exploration
that had taken him from the gold fields of Western Australia to far out outposts in Papua New Guinea.
“Marc fitted well into our dynamic, he had the field experience and importantly, boardroom experience so we approached him to be our CEO to lead the company forward into a listed PLC.”
In September 2021 FCM completed a major deal buying a UK-listed metal exploration company’s assets in Ontario for £1m giving FCM the 180km 2 land holding it has today. Later in 2021 FCM funded the process of listing the company and starting exploration work in Canada.
“This is when Marc came into his own, he had worked in Ontario for many years for an exploration company that had found significant gold and nickel deposits in the area. This background allowed him to quickly set up our operations onsite.”
With FCM now a public listed entity on the London Stock Exchange, shares trade under LSE: FCM and James’ position as executive chairman involves the monitoring of all financial drivers and investor relations: “I have the opportunity to visit the properties in Canada but my main focus is the UK operations.
“We have been busy on the ground in Ontario and have had field crews working on six of our seven properties since early May. “Our main focus is currently on the joint venture we hold at West Pickle Lake – our partner Palladium One is drilling that property now, extracting core samples of bedrock up to hundreds of metres below the ground. The visual examination of these cores is highly encouraging – they appear rich in massive and semi massive sulphides which is the material that we hope will hold the nickel and copper.
“Exploration is a high-risk business and comes with no guarantees but with the right approach and hunting in the right places we will do all we can to find these deposits.” •
firstclassmetalsplc.com
