Western Troy Capital Resources, a mineral exploration company based in Canada, keeps itself pretty busy these days with its advanced stage MacLeod Lake Copper/Molybdenum Project and most recently the company has staked a number of promising new properties in Quebec. President and CEO Rex Loesby recently sat down with MetalsNews to give us and our readers an inside look at his operation.

A mining engineer with 34 years experience in the industry, Loesby has a Professional Engineering license in Colorado and a Masters Degree in International Business and Finance. Upon graduation from university he joined Climax Molybdenum Company, a major that at the time produced approximately half the world’s molybdenum. While working out of the at the company’s Strategic Planning Department in New York, Loesby put in his time at the company’s world class Henderson and Climax mines in Colorado which gave him a solid background for the future he began to build for himself. Loesby’s years of work in the mining and finance industries took him to from Alaska to Argentina, from Europe to Australia and Papua New Guinea.

“In late 2005 I was looking for a company that had good trading activity on the Toronto Exchange, but didn’t have a lot of assets. I had a Nevada gold project that needed a trading vehicle within which we could raise some money. It wasn’t long before I was introduced to Stanley Mourin, the chairman of Western Troy. Stanley told me a little bit about the company and mentioned he had a copper-molybdenum project in Quebec. They had done a good job of nursing the project along over many years, even during the lean times of low copper and moly prices. I looked at it and said to Stanley, “MacLeod Lake is a great project, even better than the Nevada gold project I’m working on.”

The two hit it off and Mourin soon invited Loesby to come in and help him advance Western Troy. In March of 2006 they raised $1.3 million for a spring drilling program. By early 2007 Eric Sprott, a well known resource investor in Toronto who was building a molybdenum fund, took notice and along with Pinetree Capital and MineralFields, gave Western Troy $4.5 million to pursue the MacLeod Lake Project.

Also in 2007, Loesby found there was a lack of information about potential new molybdenum mines around the world. Since he had a good background in molybdenum from his Climax days, and since he felt the MacLeod Lake Project would compare very favorably with other potential new mines, he decided to do a research paper on the subject. His paper, entitled “Molybdenum Supply Forecasting” was published in the July, 2007 issue of “Mining Engineering Magazine” (a copy of an updated version of the paper can be found on Western Troy’s Website, www.westerntroy.com). With this research, Loesby found that the MacLeod Lake Project has the second-highest grade of any potential new surface mineable moly project that might make it into production in the next ten years. “Our grade at 0.175% Mo equivalent is about 65-percent higher than the average grade of current surface producers (about 0.11%).”

“We had a scoping study done on the project in early 2008 that resulted in very positive economics at the high prices we were seeing,” notes Loesby. “We’re not as big as some of the others, but our strip ratio is low, metallurgy looks very good, and we are in a jurisdiction (Quebec) that is very favorable for mining. In mid-2008 we decided to enter the final feasibility study stage and begin the process of obtaining our permits. The work was started, but because of the drop in commodity prices late last year, we decided to preserve our cash and suspend the work and wait for a recovery in copper and moly prices.”

The Scoping Study was performed by a well respected independent engineering firm in Toronto, Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle Associates. Using a copper price of $2.25 per pound and a moly price of $17per pound the project’s net present value (at 10%) came out at $156 million, with an internal return rate of 32 percent. “I ran the numbers a few weeks ago using $1.60 copper and $12 moly and we’re a bit better than breakeven, so we feel pretty confident that when we see just a modest recovery in copper and moly prices, we will get the project back on track. Right now, copper has broken above $1.80 and we expect moly prices to show some strength later this year, so things are certainly looking a lot better than a few months ago,” says Loesby.

“The MacLeod Lake deposit is not really a porphyry, not really a vein system. It seems to be a type of skarn at a contact between a granodiorite, which is an igneous rock, and a gneiss which is a metamorphic rock. It is at this contact where we get the ore zone.” Loesby adds that the ore zone in the planned pit is about 2 kilometers long and about 400 meters wide. But that the contact between the granodiorite and the gneiss is about 30 kilometers long. “We’ve seen similar mineralization along the whole contact, so we think that there’s a lot more ore to be found in the area.”

Being 100-percent owned by Western Troy with minimal claim fees and no spending requirements or cash payments, the MacLeod Lake project is a great asset for Western Troy. And being in Quebec along with our other prospects, most of our exploration spending qualifies for refunds and rebates from Quebec amounting to approximately 46% of that spending.

Cores – gold is chalcopyrite, blue is molybdenite

Loesby continues, “We have enough cash to last five years if we do nothing. In fact though, we’re going to do some exploration work this summer on a gold prospect we staked in Quebec, and we are always looking for other good prospects. Thanks to Wayne Holmstead, our VP of exploration, who has worked in Quebec for over 30 years, we have picked up a number of prospects where Wayne staked the claims based on his research of data available from the government of Quebec and other sources. We have found prospects with good showings of molybdenum, copper, precious metals, uranium, and rare earths.” Western Troy has nine prospects in addition to MacLeod Lake which should signal to the potential investor something more than promising. Western Troy presents a real opportunity to “hit the winner,” as Loesby points out.

In early 2009, Western Troy announced it had staked 92 claims in the Ashuanipi Lake district of Quebec. From its web site: “The claims cover the south limb of a folded iron formation with numerous gold values ranging up to 24 g/t over a strike length of 5.5 kilometers. Anomalous values were also detected in silver (30g/t), copper (1.28%), and tungsten (0.17%). Soil sampling over 3 kilometers of the strike detected anomalous gold and arsenic values and the anomaly was found to be open both along strike and across strike. Limited historical drilling at the west end of the zone yielded 0.06-0.14 ounces per tonne gold over three to six meters in width in three drill holes.”

On March 20, 2009, in a huge positive development for the Western Troy and its MacLeod Lake Project, the Quebec Ministry of Finance announced that it had included $130 million in its 2009/2010 budget for construction of the Otish Mountain Road. This road will pass within 70 kilometers of the MacLeod Lake Project. Loesby comments, “We have been telling folks for years about the advantages of working in Quebec. It has great mineral potential, Quebec pays for about 46% of our exploration spending, and they have supported mineral projects with infrastructure spending. With the announcement of funding for the Otish Mountain Road, we see more tangible results of the benefits of working in Quebec.

Western Troy’s board is made up of a solid team of mining professionals. Its Executive Chairman, Stanley Mourin, has more than 50 years experience in the financing of junior mining ventures. Charlie Stott worked for Climax Molybdenum Company where he was manager of all of the company’s operations at the Climax and Henderson Mines. He worked in the molybdenum marketing area for many years and he served on the Board of Directors of the Colorado School of Mines. Ed Thompson is a past PDAC chairman and currently serves on the boards of a number of junior exploration companies. Steve Vaughn is a very well respected mining attorney and geologist in Toronto. Milt Klyman was a 25 year board member of Agnico Eagle, one of the largest gold miners in Canada, and Nadim Wakeam is a well known Toronto mining and securities attorney. So we have good people who intend to make a success of Western Troy.”

Finally, Loesby wraps it up by saying, “Not only does a shareholder of Western Troy have the foundation of a solid management team and a feasibility stage project, the company has the cash to survive these tough times, plus the opportunity to hit another big winner with one or more of our early stage prospects. Our shares are trading at about 10 cents and there are only about 25 million shares outstanding (fully diluted).”

For more information visit www.westerntroy.com

Contact Information
Western Troy Capital Resources Inc.
Rex E. Loesby (President)
Tel: (416) 929-3268
Email: RexLoesby@aol.com