PIVOTAL METALS LTD (PVT) - Building A Dual-Track Copper Story In Quebec

A copper story can sound simple until you ask the hard questions: can it be built, can it be funded without brutal dilution, and is there genuine upside left to find? We’re joined by Ivan Fairhall, Managing Director of Pivotal Metals Limited, to walk through how the company is tackling those questions with a dual-track strategy in Quebec, one of the world’s most supportive mining jurisdictions.

We start with the structural edge Quebec offers critical minerals explorers and developers: strong infrastructure, an experienced mining services ecosystem, and access to abundant low-cost hydro power that’s both green and commercially meaningful. Ivan also explains how flow-through shares can help fund exploration more efficiently, a concept many ASX investors haven’t encountered, and why these real-world advantages can change the risk profile of a junior company.

From there we get specific on the Hordern Lake Copper Project, including the existing 37Mt resource at about 1.1% copper equivalent, the appeal of shallow open-pittable mineralisation, and why metallurgy sits at the centre of any credible development plan. We then shift to the Belleterre Project, where Pivotal is drilling for the first time on a district-scale land package with historic high grades nearby and large areas that have barely been tested. Ivan breaks down the targeting approach using modern EM and other geophysics to hunt for new massive sulphide systems, plus what to expect from assay timing and ongoing fieldwork.

If you’re comparing ASX copper stocks, looking for Quebec mining exposure, or trying to understand what separates a “good resource” from a real development opportunity, this conversation gives you a clear framework. Subscribe, share the episode with a mate who follows copper, and leave a review telling us what topic you want us to tackle next.

Transcript

Andrew Musgrave

Welcome again to ASX Briefs, where we explore the company’s making waves on the ASX. And today we're joined by Ivan Fairhall, the Managing Director of Pivotal Metals Limited, an explorer and developer focused on world-class critical mineral projects in the premier mining jurisdiction of Quebec in Canada. 
 
 Ivan, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast.

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Andrew.

Andrew Musgrave

Now, Ivan, for investors new to the Pivotal story, your strategy combines the near development Hordern Lake Copper project with the high-grade exploration upside at Belleterre. So how does this combination position Pivotal to deliver both near-term value and longer-term discovery potential?

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, look, I think it's a great combination to have in a company. You've got more advanced resources that underwrite the valuation of the company, you've made a discovery, and you've got the leverage that can come from moving a project forward in the right market. And then obviously you've got exploration upside. And we've got exploration upside on both projects, but it's good to have new exploration in a new area. So, yeah, we've got an advanced project at Hordern Lake. It's got a lot of copper already in the ground, it's shallow. We're looking to grow that, and but that's you know, incremental growth on a large resource base. But yeah, down at the Belleterre project, which hopefully we'll talk about, that's more of a district scale exploration opportunity, historic mining belt. There's been some very high grades there, and we're looking to make new discoveries down in that area. So, you sort of get a little bit of both sides to attract a wide range of investors and give people a good opportunity.

Andrew Musgrave

Excellent. Okay, and Quebec is often cited as a top-tier mining jurisdiction. So, could you touch on the structural advantages you have there that support you in your exploration and development objectives?

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, sure. Look, it is a fantastic place to do business. It ranks, you know, highly. This is a place that has some of the world's top mining companies, Agnico, it's their backyard and they are, you know, one of the biggest, probably almost the biggest gold company in the world now. And lots of operating mines. It's a fantastic mining jurisdiction. It's and you know, to put that into perspective, it's there's actually real tangible advantages we can point to. You know, it's got excellent infrastructure, there's you know, 20 odd operating, 22 operating mines, lots of development projects, you've got roads, well-established mining sector for services and whatnot. Really importantly, is power. Quebec operates, has a huge amount of hydro power. So, it's very, very cheap and it's green, which obviously is great. They export a lot of power down to the US. And so being able to tap into that is a structural advantage that you just can't replicate in other locations. And then from a jurisdictional perspective, you've got a lot of government support for critical metals, both in Canada and more specifically in Quebec. You've got a lot of financing support that comes from that. And something that Australian investors are probably less familiar with, but we can, as an ASX listed company, operate in Quebec, is our flow-through share scheme. So, this is a way that you can effectively raise money at a premium for your exploration work. It's a structuring thing that the company does, but it means less dilution for any given amount of expiration. And so, so these things, you know, I've been involved with projects all over the world and lots of people say they're in a supportive mining jurisdiction, but you know, this is the real deal. These are real tangible things that matter to investors today, not some, you know, future prize of, you know, in my when you're mining and whatnot. This is this is real stuff that affects junior companies today.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, and Hordern Lake appears to already be a substantial deposit. For investors assessing the project today. What are the key attributes that make Horde and Lake a compelling copper development opportunity?

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, look, I think it's a really attractive project. As you say, it's already a substantial deposit. It's about 37 million tons at 1.1% copper equivalent. That's over 400,000 tons of copper equivalent. This is something that junior companies with a market cap of around $20 million, this is something that they aspire to have, and they've got to spend a lot of money on drilling. We've already got that today. So that mineralization is going to grow. We've, you know, got lots of exploration upside. You can see where the growth is kind of come from. But, you know, even at today's scale, I think it's really attractive because it's shallow. That's a great sort of you know, low-risk, lower cost way to develop a project is having open pittable material. We've got very strong metallurgy, copper recovery is up around 90%, and there's more test work ongoing. And yeah, that exploration upside, we know where the project is going to grow from. So, you know, you combine all of those things and you've got a known great development foundation, something that you continue to grow the resources around and incremental tons will make sense against something that is already quite substantial, which is what we believe we've got.

Andrew Musgrave

And what do you see as the key milestones required to move Horton Lake towards development?

Ivan Fairhall

Look, I think we want to work both sides of the equation. It's continuing to de-risk the project and optimize it technically, but really also evaluating and prosecuting growth opportunities. So those growth opportunities, like I mentioned, the deposit is pretty much open in multiple directions. And we've got geophysics that provides really clear pathway to growing the deposit. You can see the drilling's open; you know, the mineralization is open. You can see the geophysics tells you it continues. And so, there's a pathway there to grow, grow the deposit. On the development side, we're really sort of doing our homework on the economic side. We've got just on the strength of the resource we've already got today, parking the expiration upside. We've got ongoing metallurgical test work, refining those recoveries across the full metal suite because it's not just copper, but there's also byproducts, and they contribute quite a lot of money to the to the revenue line. And these are you know things that are important precursors to development studies and economic studies. So, we're getting our house in order, we're looking at the resource. There's some drilling that's not included in the resource, so we've got the potential to grow the deposit even there. So yeah, all of those work to come together to push the project forward as a development opportunity, get through those key steps as well as growing the resource parallel.

Andrew Musgrave

Turning now to Belleterre, you have an initial 1500-meter diamond drilling program currently underway. So, stepping back, what makes this project a compelling exploration opportunity?

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, look, Belleterre's really exciting project for us. This is a project that we acquired four or five years ago, and we're doing our first exploration program now because we were we're very focused on our Hordern Lake project. So, we've had some capital now available to finally get down and drill this project, which is a really exciting time. Lots of investors have been looking forward to this. What it is, it's a district sort of scale, it's a large land package wholly owned by Pivotal. and we're in a historic uh mining area. There's been historic mining here. We're also regionally in just really quite near the Abitibi, very famous mining jurisdiction and Greenstone Belt. This region's got historical mines and multiple occurrences, instances, discoveries of extremely high-grade mineralization, like globally significant at an individual sample level, some of the highest-grade mineralization you've ever seen. So those deposits had a little bit of drilling, a little bit small, but at a regional perspective, there's very been very little exploration, very little systematic exploration, very little drilling outside of those outcropping discovery areas. So, what we're really doing is to work from the known out towards the unknown, applying modern geophysical techniques, systematic exploration to now look at this at a regional scale and hopefully make you know new discoveries. And so, there's a lot of unexplored ground, huge areas adjacent to discoveries or operating mine that hasn't even seen a drill hole. And so that's you know, that's a fantastic place to go looking for. And ultimately, we're looking to make a meaningful discovery here. But, yeah, we're excited to be out there drilling for the first time.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, and just looking more closely at that current drilling program, how are you prioritizing targets across the project and what specific geological and geophysical signatures give you confidence you're drilling in the right place?

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, the targeting strategy, it's you know, it's several fold, obviously. We're working with a lot of historical data, and we've gathered a lot of new data, in particular on the geophysics side. So, we've applied modern geophysical surveys, principally EM, because most of the targets are you know massive sulphide type mineralization expected to respond very well to EM. We've done detailed groundwork and we've combined that with airborne surveys, that was part of the targeting. And we've got you know, sampling and mapping, and we've done an IP survey. So, you overlay all these things, and we're really, it's helping identify the highest priority targets. So, we prioritize them, and that's hoping to uh increase our chances of success there. So, the current drill program is focused on testing the most compelling of those targets. We've got typically we've got geophysical signature from recent surveys, new surveys that we've done, combined with geology, historic mining, mineral, you know, historic mining areas, surface samples to really triangulate on you know the potential presence of what we believe could be new massive sulphide systems that haven't been discovered yet.

Andrew Musgrave

And touching on the financials with a strong cash balance of $5.5 million as of last quarter, you have flexibility on in your drilling and development programs. So, what can shareholders expect in terms of news flow and assay results throughout the remainder of 2026?

Ivan Fairhall

That's right. We've got a good level of funding there, as you mentioned. We're active on multiple fronts, so shareholders should expect to see steady updates across both exploration that we're doing, as well as these technical work streams that we're doing on Hordern Lake. So, at Belleterre, obviously we've got current drilling. We're also doing other geophysics and mapping surveys are coming into the summer period where there's no snow, so we can really get back on the ground and do proper geological work. And so those drilling assays and some of those results are expected to, you know, release, be released progressively as we, you know, process the drilling through the laboratory. So, so people always uh like the anticipation of drill results, and so they're on the way there. And at Hordern Lake, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we're continuing advancing, you know, as both an exploration project as well as a developing opportunity. We're looking at the resource. Like I said, we've got drilling that's not included in the resource. We're doing more metallurgical test work, looking at technical studies. So, thinking about this as a development opportunity, but then in parallel, planning our next drill program, you know, focusing on that exploration upside where the geophysics tells us we should go, and that's how we'll continue to grow the size of the prize in parallel.

Andrew Musgrave

And finally, for investors evaluating copper opportunities on the ASX today, what do you believe differentiates Pivotal Metals from the rest of the sector?

Ivan Fairhall

Oh, look, I'd to try to keep it to kind of three, you know, three key things. We've got a substantial copper resource in a tier one jurisdiction. So, they've got a strong foundation of value in the company. Secondly, you know, that project has low-risk development hurdles, it's open pit, it's got good metwork, access to infrastructure. They should drive a competitive cost base, and we're looking at how we can articulate that to the market. And thirdly, we've got this exploration opportunity, not just our, you know, exploration at Belleterre, but also the growth opportunities at Hordern Lake. So, you know, we think we've got a strong foundation. You combine those things uh in a place like Quebec, and it uh really positioned Pivotal quite well in the sector relative to our peers.

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, Ivan. Well, thanks for joining me on the ASX Briefs podcast, and we look forward to tracking the results from both the drill rig and the metallurgical lab in the upcoming months. 

Ivan Fairhall

Yeah, thank you very much for having me on, Andrew. 

Andrew Musgrave

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.