Tres-Or

Management Team

While having good properties is certainly a vital ingredient in a successful resource company, the other key ingredient is good management, and TRS certainly has a team in place which is top notch and very well experienced to bring it all off.

Laura Lee Duffett, B.Sc., P.Geo. is President and a Director.
Ms. Duffett became President in January 2000 and has had a successful 18 year career as a senior manager of leading companies in the Canadian junior mineral exploration industry. She is a member of the Professional Association of Engineers and Geoscientists of the Province of British Columbia, a Fellow of the Geological Association of Canada and a graduate geologist from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. She has acted as a consulting geologist and Manager, Business Development for a number of successful exploration companies including Eldorado Corporation Ltd., HRC Development Corporation, Trillion Resources Ltd., Oliver Gold Corporation, Solomon Resources Limited, Nickelodeon Minerals Ltd., Brett Resources Ltd. and others. Ms. Duffett has an extensive management background in geological research, marketing, corporate development, financing and technical project evaluation. Her diverse international experience encompasses mineral exploration and acquisition programs in Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Johnson Manu, Ph.D. Geology is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tres-Or (Ghana) Limited. Dr. Manu was born in Ghana and is a graduate of Geology from the University of Ghana and holds a Masters and Ph.D. degree in Mineralogy/Economic Geology from Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. He completed an MBA Finance at the University of Ghana and is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geology at the prestigious University of Ghana. Dr. Manu has authored various publications on the geology of Ghana’s Birimian Gold Belt and his research and studies are widely referenced. He has been involved in the preparation of technical reports for the UN regarding the exploration of gold, diamond and industrial mineral development in Ghana and has consulted in the development of gold exploration activities for many Ghanaian companies and entrepreneurs. Dr. Manu is providing hands-on expertise and project consulting services to Tres-Or in pursuit of assets in Ghana.

L.G. (Bruce) Luckman is Vice President of Operations of Tres-Or (Ghana) Limited. Mr. Luckman has over 30 years experience as a miner and mining engineer specializing in alluvial gold production. Over his career he has been a director of five Canadian-listed public companies including Mistral Resources Ltd. which mined over 200 ounces of gold per day (approximately 75,000 ounces per annum from the Otter Creek Mine) at operations in the Atlin area of northern British Columbia, Canada. Mr. Luckman has successfully completed bringing two gold mines into commercial production in North America and is heading up the development of production from the alluvial/elluvial gold at the Agudee Project, Ghana. Over the past three years Mr. Luckman has also been involved in counseling and teaching the necessary skills to aid the Ghanaian people in developing their mineral resources.

N. Reid Toreson, B.Comm. is a Director, Chief Financial Officer and head of the audit committee. He is a a founding director of Tres-Or, and is the President of Wesclean Equipment and Cleaning Supplies Ltd., the largest cleaning supply company in western Canada. Mr. Toreson is a board member of several public companies and currently is Executive Vice President of the TSX-listed Rainbow Group of Companies.

John P. Larche, C.M. is a Director and one of the most successful mineral explorationists in Canada today. He started in the exploration business in 1955 as an independent prospector and contractor and still remains an active explorationist. Mr. Larche was a co-discoverer of the Hemlo Gold Camp in the 1980s, now one of the most prolific mining camps in the Canada. He was inducted as a member of the Order of Canada in 2002, a citation which commends him for his tireless work to advance the mineral exploration and development industry in Canada. Mr. Larche has served as President of Moneta Porcupine Mines since 1992 and President of Canadian Arrow Mines from 1989 to 2004 and is still on the Board of Directors of both companies.

Gareth E. Mason, B.Comm. is a Director and is a founder and the President of North American Cleaning and Equipment, a division of the Mason Group of Companies headquartered in Toronto, which imports commercial cleaning equipment from Europe and Australia. Mr. Mason brings expertise in financing, international marketing, sales and management to the Board.

David J. Cowan, LLB. is a Director. He was a Partner at the firm of Clark Wilson from1990 to 2003 and has been Associate Counsel at Lang Michener, Barristers & Solicitors since 2003. He also a Director of Brazilian Diamonds Limited a TSX and London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market (AIM) listed company and Director of Piper Capital and Alto Ventures, both TSX Venture listed companies.

Barry W. Phillips, F.I.C.B. is the CFO and a Director of Tres-Or (Ghana). Mr. Phillips acts a financial advisor to the Board of Directors. Mr. Phillips has over 50 years experience in international banking and financial consulting. He served in several senior positions with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), in their Canadian and International Divisions including being the Senior Area Administrator for the Trinidad and Tobago operations and the Senior Manager overseeing the banks offshore operations and services in the Cayman Islands. Mr. Phillips started his own financial consulting practice in 1981 specializing in raising venture capital for Canadian corporations and providing CFO related services to a range of corporations.

David Smith, C.M., M.M.L.J., D.U. is an Advisor to Tres-Or (Ghana). He is a Member of the Order of Canada, and the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions. Through his philanthropic projects, he has raised over $140,000,000 for various causes and fundraising efforts for organizations in Canada and elsewhere. He has developed state of the art learning centres including the highly successful Ottawa Technical Learning Centre with over 900 students enrolled in a range of course with its “Learn to Earn” training program. He joins Tres-Or in its commitment and pursuit of socio and economic development with the Ghanaian peoples who are working with Tres-Or in the development of gold resources in Ghana.

Suhal Mirza is and Advisor and Chief Technical Officer of Tres-Or (Ghana) and a graduate of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. He is currently the Chief Technical Officer (“CTO”) and a co-founder of Spreed Inc., a technology company focused on disseminating information to mobile devices and iPhones. Over the past decade, he has worked in Internet and technology related fields and has led teams to many technological firsts including: building the first widely used for money peer to peer network, likely building the first for money transaction network over wireless infrastructures and building one of the first betting exchanges. Mr. Mirza was the CTO and co-founder of Trident Gaming which was sold to a Fortune 500 company in 2006. He started a philanthropic fund in 2006 and has recently joined Tres-Or to assist with technological communication efforts and marketing, socio-economic development and education associated with Tres-Or’s projects located in Canada and Ghana, West Africa.

John G. Henry is an Advisor on International Marketing to Tres-Or (Ghana). He brings a wealth of entrepreneurial experience to Tres-Or with over 25 years of funding, developing, marketing and consultation to various organizations. Mr. Henry has managed the development of multi-million dollar companies specializing in General Industrial Construction, Project Estimating and Management, Millwright, Sheet Metal, Fabrication and Welding and was responsible for Research and Development, Product Manufacturing and Contract Negotiations and Development. He has served as the President and CEO of the Henry Group for 13 years and Chairman of Board for 2 years. He has travelled abroad to Africa and South America to assist in the training in international businessmen for local outreach programs in their communities.

But this initial alluvial mining operation is just the first step in what could prove to be a potentially huge and very rewarding gold mining adventure for a small company which could eventually become a major player in Africa. At this point, immediate cash flow is the target being focused on, but that would only be the important initial stepping stone to a far greater play. If early expectations are achieved on even a fractional basis of what has been indicated through the testing work done to date, Tres-Or could eventually become a very well-known name in the international gold mining business.

The country known as Ghana since 1957, wasn’t formerly called the Gold Coast for no good reason. Located on the west coast of Africa, it has had a rich and continuing history of gold production dating back hundreds, if not thousands of years. Ghana is currently the second largest gold producing country in Africa, behind South Africa, and is reported to have produced over 90 million ounces of gold over the past century.

The Agudee Project

This past April, Tres-Or signed a profit sharing agreement with a private Ghanaian company which provides mining and related services to gold mining projects in Ghana. Under this agreement, Tres-Or’’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Tres-Or (Ghana) Limited is now exploring for and will be developing gold assets in the Ashanti region of central Ghana. It will receive 50% of the proceeds from the sale of all gold mined under this profit sharing agreement from the 73% interest jointly held with the Ghanaian company.

There are a total of 29 potential projects which fall under the agreement but the initial efforts will concentrate on the Agudee Project, a group of concessions held by a local syndicate of companies located in the Atwina Mpanua District of the Ashanti Region in central Ghana. In return for providing turnkey mining and project administrative services on the Agudee Project, Tres-Or and its Ghanaian partner will collectively be entitled to 73% of the proceeds from the sale of any gold mined, to be split 50/50 between the Parties. Tres-Or Ghana is funding the alluvial gold mining costs in stages, up to a maximum of CDN$650,000, needed to place the Agudee Project into commercial production. Beyond that, the Parties will fund any additional expenditures related to the Agudee Project on an equal basis.

Prior to entering into the agreement, Tres-Or conducted its due diligence on the potential for the Agudee Project through its President, Laura Lee Duffett, a Professional Geologist, who personally visited Ghana in Early 2009, met with the principals of its potential Ghanaian partner and supervised her own testing work on the Agudee property to confirm the information which she had previously received. Much to her surprise, her test results confirmed the amazingly high grade gold content which was previously reported by others. Based upon the potential shown in these tests, she determined that this was an opportunity that just could not be passed up. And so Tres-Or now finds itself in the enviable position of being just a few weeks away from joining a select group of public companies actually producing gold on a commercial scale.

While it is still too early to forecast with certainty how well the Agudee Project will ultimately work out, based upon the relatively limited testing work to date, all indications point to some very high grade gold bearing material covering a large expanse of territory which can be mined at a very low cost.

Placer Mining Basics

For those not familiar with alluvial, or placer mining operations, as they are commonly called, in many respects they can be the easiest of all methods to extract gold from the ground - assuming you have the right conditions. These include having "free" gold, meaning gold in a relatively pure state (75% plus) in nugget, flake or fine dust form which is mixed in with rocks, sand and some clay and which can be relatively easily separated by mechanical or other physical means. Gold panning is the most common method which most people are familiar with, but that is generally useful mainly for testing work or in very small volume hand operations. To process large quantities of material needed to recover gold on a commercial scale requires larger earth-moving equipment as well as processing and recovery equipment which can handle hundreds of tonnes of material per hour. Some large dredges used in the heyday of placer mining were able to process thousands of tonnes per day.

Typical placer mining operations process relatively low grade material and make up for it by handling high volumes. Most placer operations are fortunate to recover between $5 and $10 worth of gold per tonne of material processed and are often able to do so at a cost of $2 to $3 per tonne. $10 at $900 gold is about 0.011oz or 0.34 gram per tonne.

By way of comparison, the testing work done on the Agudee property to date, and over very widely dispersed locations, indicates material running in the range of 9 to 18 grams per tonne, which at $900 gold runs between about $290 and $575 per tonne. Quoting from a Memo to Tres-Or’s management entitled “Ghana Samples – Review of samples and analytical procedures” by Harrison Cookenboo, Ph.D., P. Geo. dated February 20, 2009: “The Agudee Property samples carry a remarkable amount of gold. The individual samples range between 9 to 18 g/t (wet weights), which is roughly between 1/3 and 1/2 ounce of gold per tonne of gravel collected. Such recoverable concentrations, if replicable over even modest parts of the property, would point to a potentially highly profitable operation.”

Now we certainly can’t assume at this time that this is in any way typical of what will ultimately be an average recovered grade for the whole property since there are certain to be wide variations in the gold content of the material being mined and processed. On the other hand, anyone familiar with placer mining will agree that the test results achieved to date are way above anything that most operations every see except in very rich "pay streaks" near bedrock. For random testing near the surface in widely dispersed areas to produce these types of numbers, it would seem to indicate that this is indeed an unusual and potentially record-setting property. Only time and actual operating results will provide the true answer.

Current Production Plans and Operations

What is perhaps the most enticing aspect of this property, and what could make it a potentially huge success is that most of the gold recovered to date is in a very rough and jagged form. The fact that it has not been worn much around the edges would indicate that it has not traveled a great distance. The rough shape indicates that its source is very nearby and perhaps in come cases almost under the area where some of it is it has been recovered.

Most mineral property development projects burn cash, like incinerators, on geophysical and drilling work needed to try to prove up an economic resource which can take millions of dollars and years of work to even get to a feasibility stage. Agudee, on the other hand, is expected to be an earn-as-you-learn project. Since placer projects are usually not amenable to extensive testing due to the large variability in the results achieved, often the best way to test is to simply start producing on a limited scale and see what is recovered.

So, Tres-Or’s team on the ground, headed by veteran placer mining expert, Bruce Luckman, Vice President of Operations, Tres-Or (Ghana) Limited, is proceeding with all due speed to get the operation going and the cash flowing. Mr. Luckman has been involved in operating placer projects in the U.S., Canada and Africa for over 30 years. His largest operation at Otter Creek in northern B.C. produced over 200 ounces of gold per day. Over the years he has encountered most of the problems that someone in this business is likely to see, and he knows what to do and what to try to avoid doing in order to have a successful operation.

Tres-Or’s mining plan involves pilot production which has begun with an excavator and sluice/recovery plant which will be replaced by a 200 tonne per hour floating plant and recovery system. An on-site gold processing plant will allow the production of gold dore bars which will then be sent to refiners for final processing into .999 fine gold bars considered “good delivery” in the international gold trade.

At 200 tonnes per hour, if the material being processed were to average only three grams per tonne, (a third of low end sampling results) the yield would be 600 grams or nearly 20 ounces per hour. At nine grams, it would be nearly 60 ounces per hour. Once everything is in place and properly tuned up, the plan is to operate two 10-hour shifts per day, of which 9 hours would be actual production and one hour would be cleanup and maintenance. But even running only one 10 hour shift per day could mean some very significant production - like 175 to 525 ounces daily. Assuming that the fineness of the gold averages only 90%, it would still be worth between about $142,000 and $425,000 at $900 gold. Not bad for a day’s work - if you can get it!

When you multiply even the lower figure by 300 operating days per year you get about US$42.6 million in revenue. Direct operating costs using a floating mining plant and related processing equipment at 200 tonnes per hour shouldn't run more than $2 per tonne, according to Bruce Luckman, so we could be looking at annual operating profits for this particular project of about US$41.5 million at $900 gold. Tres-Or's 36.5% of this would be about $15.15 million. Just for quick calculating purposes, assuming that overhead related to the project and total taxes come to 45% of the $15.15 million, that still leaves about US$8.33 million in net profit after taxes. On a fully diluted basis that works out to over C$0.14 per common share at current exchange rates.

Apply whatever multiple you like to that. Seven times is about $1.00 per share. Ten times is about $1.40 and 15 times is about $2.10. Of course these are all rough "back of the envelope" calculations based on operating only one 10-hour shift per day, and current plans call for two shifts per day. Obviously, some of the variables involved in an operation such as this can have quite a wide range. If the average recovered grade is only 2 grams per tonne instead of 3, the operating profit drops to about US$27 million and Tres-Or's net portion goes down to about US$5.4 million after taxes, or about C$0.092 per share at current exchange rates.

We will all have a better idea of what lies in store for this operation in the next few weeks as actual production results come in. While the first 1000 gram gold bar was poured August 1st, according to Mr. Luckman, Tres-Or expects to be pouring larger gold bars daily by the end of August and hopefully increase production from there.

Other Properties

Tres-Or is certainly not a one-trick company, and before its acquisition of the Ghana operations, it was focused on the exploration and development of diamond and precious/base metals in northeastern Ontario and northwestern Quebec. These are still very viable projects but are currently somewhat on the back burner since they consume cash rather then generate it. Once its Ghanaian operations begin producing significant excess cash flow, it is expected that further attention and exploration work will be directed at developing the potential of the Canadian properties.

In 2005 Tres-Or discovered the largest diamond-bearing pipe, named the Lapoint Kimberlite, which has been found to date in the Province of Ontario. The largest diamond recovered from the Lapoint is a +2.4 mm stone, described as clear and white, and weighs 0.0665 carats. As a result of its discoveries, Tres-Or was granted two 21-year mining licences in 2007. Tres-Or’s Quebec properties are known to host 6 kimberlite bodies which were discovered by drilling.

Also in Ontario, the Mann Township platinum/palladium property hosts a number of exploration features which suggests a good environment for the development of nickel-copper sulphide and Platinum Group Element (PGE) mineralization. The property is situated within the Mann complex, a large, layered ultramafic intrusion, which extends for over 40 kilometres of strike length with a width greater than 1.5 kilometres. Several nickel-copper (Ni-Cu) sulphide showings and Platinum Group Element showings have been identified within the complex. Tres-Or has drilled significant shallow platinum/palladium mineralization on its Mann Project. Exploring the source of gold grains in till sampling and extending the Pt-Pd mineralized zone is continuing.

The Notre Dame du Nord Project in Quebec covers over 8,900 hectares and hosts 3 kimberlite pipes, two new kimberlites discovered by drilling and multiple high-priority geophysical and geochemical targets to evaluate. Tres-Or expanded the Notre Dame du Nord project to include 20 additional claims which cover gold and base metal targets, as well as diamond potential.

The Temagami Diamond Project in Ontario covers up to 100,000 hectares of claims covering favorable structures believed to host diamond-bearing kimberlites based upon positive indicator mineral results and high-priority magnetic anomalies indicative of kimberlite. The Temagami North Project includes over 150 claim units in the New Liskeard/Cobalt area where more than a dozen kimberlite pipes occur, half of which are diamond-bearing.

All of Tres-Or's projects in Canada have excellent infrastructure to support exploration and development. Roads, power and qualified workforce are all in close proximity.