Northern Vertex bolsters board with new addition

Northern Vertex Mining Corp. (CVE:NEE) has appointed Gordon D. Ulrich to its board of directors, adding to the company's technical mining expertise as it moves forward with its plans for the Moss mine in Arizona.

According to a company statement released Thursday, Ulrich has more than 40 years of senior level experience in all facets of mine development, operations and executive leadership. He was president and chief executive of major energy company Luscar from 1990 to 2001. 

"We are most pleased to have someone of Gordon's caliber join our Board. It has been my privilege to have worked with Gordon both as one of his VPs at Luscar and at Farallon Mining Ltd., where he served as a valued board member when I was CEO," said Northern Vertex's chief Dick Whittington in the release. 

"Gordon's keen insight into technical mining operations as well as the business of mining will be invaluable to us as we move forward with our plans for the Moss Mine Gold-Silver Project."               

Of note, Ulrich has been an independent director of a number of resource companies including Farallon Mining, Blue Note Mining, Forest Gate Resources and Messina Minerals. 

Separately, Northern Vertex also told investors Thursday that it is continuing to respond to regulatory comments from staff at the British Columbia Securities Commission with respect to its March preliminary economic assessment, which is in the process of being amended.

It said a news release summarizing the changes to the report will be released at the same time as the conclusion of the review and comment process, "the timing of which cannot be currently predicted". 

The company's long-awaited preliminary economic assessment report, released in late March, showed a whopping 118 percent internal rate of return (IRR), pre-tax, for the Moss project. 

The NI 43-101 report, which is based on the updated resource estimate the company put out in March, looked at the economics of open pit mining and heap leach processing for the Moss project. Using a gold price of $1,500 an ounce, the project was estimated to have a net present value of $110 million, pre-tax, at a 5 percent discount rate, with an IRR of 117.9 percent. 

Capex was projected at $26.6 million, with a payback period of 15 months before tax. Cash costs per gold equivalent ounce were pegged at $490 an ounce, for a mine with a life of five years producing at 5,000 tonnes per day for 42,000 ounces of gold equivalent per year. 

Northern Vertex has the right to earn a 70 percent interest in the property from Patriot Gold Corp by spending $8 million and preparing a feasibility study. It has spent a total of $5.6 million so far.