Royal Road Minerals CEO on Colombia drill results pending

0:00At PDAQ 2026, I'm here at the OGC market. I'm with Tim Kaplan, who's the CEO of Royal Road Minerals. Tim, it's great to have you with us today. Hi, Jeff. Thanks, Angela. Thanks for having me. How are you finding the Bosat PDAQ this year? I think this is the busiest PDAQ. I'm on my team, but the numbers are telephone story. I think the last one was 25 or so thousand. And they're telling me around 40. I don't know how true that is, but it's damn busy. I mean, it has a lot to do with where commodities are at the moment. It sounds like it's a good time to be the kind of positioned where you are, you know, in precious and based models. But Tim, we were talking about the history of Royal Road and the work that you've been doing previously and how that sets you up for 2026. So I want to focus in on Columbia, where you've got a project that you're drilling right now, waiting for drill results, but give me a bit of a history because you were in Columbia and then you kind of pivoted out and now you're zeroing back in.

1:01Correct. Okay. So we as Royal Road, we even then we were going back to Columbia. I have a long history in Columbia. That goes right back to about 25 years ago. But we went to Columbia in 2015. And we went there just before the 2016 peace process, which was the peace process that the President Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize for. And what we did is we engaged ourselves quite closely with the government, with its peace process initiatives, its aspirations and really tried to lean into that process and help that gain us access to what I think most of your viewers and listeners would agree is what are most respective countries in the world. Obviously, you know, trouble. So we were busy working on that.

2:02We secured some highly prospective copper ground near the port, which was still we're still on all of this down near the border with Ecuador. We then in 2019 acquired Anglo-Govish anti-expiration assets. So we're now that I think we are the largest tidal and application holder in the country. And then, as I say, we leaned into this peace process and what I mean with that is that we signed agreements with ex-competent, so ex-cooperatives that their main aim was to reintegrate, ex-competent to sign up for this peace process. We signed some fairly innovative agreements with Afro-Indigenous communities in which we effectively shared tidal with them, simply worked pretty well. And then, you know, we were moving along at a reasonable pace

3:02because it's in our country, you can rush them, it's in. And then in 2021, we were drilling one of our projects in Antiochia. We intersected the poor free, so gold, copper sewer, in terms of value. So we're basically doing intersections, well, and beyond 300 litres, at one to two grams, gold equivalent. And it was a discovery in the sense that we, you know, it was a project we acquired off Anglo, but they didn't know the poor free was underneath it. We then, it's a big bit of a long story, isn't it? We then, in 2022, we were waiting for a certain application to be converted to a title, which is almost in the center of that poor free target. That was suspended as part of a review, but the new president was doing off the mining board. And then in March of last year, they re-initialed that process. The title was going to do is in December, and we'll be back drilling there since mid-January.

4:06Okay, okay, and we're still waiting to see some drill results in our way, but what are you kind of seeing from the drill that gives you an idea of the potential and gets shareholder as the idea of the potential? Okay, so what we're seeing is similar stuff, what was giving us these long intersections of low grade, so one to two grams, and we're also seeing these high grade sections. Well, what we've ever come before, you've typically voted for like one second, two seconds. What we think we've got is, is what we call a cupola, so we have an intrusion, and we have a roof of it in which we've got quite a bit of coffee gold and silver, and then cutting through that later, so they've been formed later, gold and silver veins. And we're just kind of drilled the extensive out right now, so we're stepping away from non-drillings through the cupola, through the veins, allowing it to grow organically. Yeah, yeah. What to say, I mean, you know, you're talking about, you obviously have a very long

5:10history in Columbia, and you really made a point to sign innovative agreements and develop the partnerships on the ground. I mean, I think that speaks a lot to the potential that you see at the project and the commitment that you have to the country for what kind of speak online. Yeah, so let me send to that on something we press release yesterday, so yesterday we press released Memorandrum, Memorandrum, MOU, with the governor of a province called Naurinia, so Naurinia is right down the ballhouse of the deck. It's where there are three mountain ranges in Columbia, they all come together, the unites in kind of one range down in Naurinia, and so, you know, making this extremely simple, you kind of get all the resources in those three ranges compressed into one. And we own applications and titles over a mod of that district. It's a very difficult district from security perspective, but they have a very proactive, just, you know, forward-looking

6:15governor down there was managed to advance, it's a very complicated piece agreement. So, in fact, is advanced more than, I would say, any other province in Columbia, bringing a piece to his in particular region. So, we signed an agreement with him, and that agreement is, you know, it's only in MOU, it's non-binding, but it gives us two years to align us to formalising formal miners, provide ourselves, you know, the exploration access we need. In an area that I would strongly argue is the most prospective and under-export section of the add is that the last bit, if you know what I mean. And so, I think that sort of answers your question. We're so convinced of the potential in that particular district that we're going to go through this whole process, which is not going to be a short story, this whole process of formalising informal miners, ensuring sort of long-term security, working with the governor on his initiatives,

7:20and hopefully managing to define some very exciting, comprehensive resources down there. These resources are known about, they'll be back by the Japanese in the early 80s. It's just a case of getting back onto them safely. Yeah. Well, look, it's an exciting time to be operating in the country, and it's a very exciting time in terms of your results coming out. So, we'll be looking forward to seeing those Tim's lovely speak with you. A pleasure. Thanks, thank you. For proactive