Banyan Gold (TSXV:BYN) - Unlocking a 7 Million Ounce Gold Opportunity in the Yukon

[Music] Tera Christie president and CEO bany gold banan has the ormac project located in the Yukon where we've just put out a 7 million ounce resource that's on Surface on a project that has exceptional infrastructure with roads power immediately adjacent to two mines that are operating hecka high-grade silver and Victoria Gold's open pit Heap Leach mine Tara thank you very much for the introduction good to meet you in person finally yeah it's been a while it's been a while um great story uh you know great resource we talk about the metallurgical uh test work and and what's going on at a project level but um before we get there here we are pdac day I don't know what four five or six it's been a long one and before that you're at um bimo yep been on the road for almost two weeks now what's the um and obviously the mood has just kind of changed um from everybody kind of being slightly beaten up the Popp in the gold price uh has actually kind of animated the entire Market but particularly the gold companies um how you know when you started on the road two weeks ago what was your reception and what was the the mood and and how has that kind of changed over the two weeks or maybe it hasn't because maybe uh the story was sufficiently good uh at the beginning yeah the overall atmosphere so at bimo you know there we hadn't had the gold priz pop up yeah um but I think there were a lot of people anticipating it um I there was actually quite a lot of optimism at be mo that I experienced and you know good feedback to us for our project and where we were so I thought I thought it was an excellent conference great meetings were you meeting institutional uh investors typically yeah yeah very you always meet with institutionalsales there private investors new investors and that was quite interesting both there and here there were some generalists that I you know were really making their first 4as into mining which I thought was interesting um and you know we've seen that even with a few investments in companies recently there's been some some generalists that this you talk to kind of the is it du and may or Dr and Miller who kind of took some shares out of Nvidia and kind of bought into Newmont is that what you're referring to or yeah that there's others as well um like you look at the GM GMT Capital that invested in Victoria gold they took a 99.9% stake and a couple in Victoria but also in some other mining companies and it's generalists well they aren't mining Specialists that's for sure this is their first foray into uh I can't remember where he made his money think in oil and gas um if I remember but yeah there's a bunch I've met with so many people that it's hard to keep everybody straight the good thing I keep notes and of course you know when you look at the the stock the stock market um with this kind of huge rise in the tech sector and the the relative valuation you kind of 50-year lows Rel you know the mining sector relative to The Wider stock market um so what you're essentially saying if I hear you right is that there was um some generous investors thinking well hang about maybe we should buy low um yeah that's a good concept by low sell High um usually most people wait until the Mania is kind of started on whatever it is whether it's Tech now you know buying Nvidia now at the top is that the time to buy it I know maybe it can still go higher there's a lot of people in the world so you know it's kind of momentum sometimes creates it own momentum but it's pretty high valuation for yeah anyway in juniors right now are so undervalued like I look at some of the particularly the gold companies and you know they're trading at unbelievably low price per ounce or however you want to Value it uh and I know there's been inflation and so some of our miners are certainly struggling because of the margins and you know their all and sustaining costs are up but still they're going to be cash flowing an awful lot of money with this increase in gold price so I think and I think we needed to see gold price go up to for the major minors but to see some of these small assets like we're trading at like $9 per ounce many of our peers are kind of 3070 um for the pre-development phase companies so uh I think there's lots of room for many companies to rate and banion I think is one of them well I mean I look at the um your share price chart and you know in many ways you've held value well during 2023 um okay kind of the it has drifted a little bit lower but relative to your peers I mean a lot of the performance thir share price performance in other gold companies has been pretty brutal and pretty Savage and you've you've held your own but as you said um 7 million ounces in a market capitalization of about 70 us more or less in US Dollars yeah and I think part of that share price staying fairly stable is because we have some real solid LGH holding institutional investors so you know with about 20 phone calls I can talk to 60% of my stockholders and that's been how we financed you know we haven't had to do a big let's go to the market and see anybody can join our financing um you know I found it's more efficient to find your Cornerstone shareholders that you know are long holders particularly when you're doing flowthrough and we primarily only do charity flowthrough financings or hard dollars we have done a little bit of regular flow through but while that's wonderful for taxes in Canada it often means the people are really buying and investing in stocks purely for the tax advantage and then after four months they sell it um you know my last financing was in December 2022 which is a long time ago that to it was $12.2 million and it was three subscription agreements that's when Fidelity came in so it was a a pretty tight financing and and you know hindsight's 2020 I should have raised more but um you know we're still sitting here with seven just under $7 million now so we make money go very long way we' done another raise before that though right in June we raised 16 million before that okay so that's how we ended up with being able to drill 25,000 meters take the resource up to 7 million ounces do all the metalurgy that we've done Baseline and and still manage to so $7 million um in treasury at the moment more or less Y and is that enough for your plans for 20124 and perhaps you could kind of remind me what your plans are for this year so we're still you know I wanted to talk to my big shareholders here about what they were seeing in the market and it's nice to see this gold price change that certainly because there were a few you know back in January February people are like gold might drop the sky is falling which I'm we heard from lots of juniors in which case 7 million you know we can that could have managed us all the way through 2025 you can kind of do the lower cost but value Ad work behind the scenes quiet and we're still doing that and that's been a big part of what we've been doing since we got our dral results we did the resort some people are like why did you even bother to put out a resource I'm like well we're now at the phase where we're doing some internal engineering and scoping study work trying to understand uh the sensitivities and the key things that need to be done to really make this an economic project and you don't you might as well have your resource updated you know remember we had three deposits before if you really only have two in the pits connected it makes a lot more sense to be doing your engineering on the the larger resource which is connected um when you're starting to think about where do you start mining so it made sense to do it so just in kind of um just for my benefit the the power line is the main deposit main deposit and of the 7 million ounces you've got about 6 million ounces in that Y and then to the north you've got air strip is that right that's correct which is the remaining 1 million ounce more or less y okay and so when you talk about kind of doing the engineering studies and kind of the the drisking work and the internal uh uh kind of verification that's most is that mostly on power line or you also doing some work on air strip as well well we're evaluating both of it with our scope go both of them with our scoping level work um but it's pretty clear you start mining on power line and if you look at the East West sections which you know we've got them out here at our Kack um there's really a definite area where we see highgrade rate at surface that's likely your phase one mining pit and that's been an important part where do you start mining because that's where we need to potentially take the resource from inferred to indicated and really established that there's some continuity in that high grade cuz you don't want to you know base your mining plan and not really know that that high grade that you think is there is there so and your definition of high grade and I this is not dispara but the average resource is around 6 63 so 7 million at 63 and then the high grade it's kind of closer to one gram is that right yeah when you look at Global deposits that are mining right now one gram and you look at Victoria gold um you know they mine two years at 085 and they're feasibility study gave them payback of their Capital so you know my kind of Target is I need to find half a million to 3/4 of a million ounces of one gram plus that is there rough numbers from what we've to be our payback and if we can find that starter pit that drives your IR and your payback in this project and and then you're kind of over that critical hurdle because once you've paid for the infrastructure you know 0. five becomes economic because all of it's paid for it's the marginal um ecomics on kind of lower grade material and you can kind of stretch that once you've based on kind of unit cost and also having paid back your capital and that so that was another benefit of the resource was that we can increase the sensitivity table we increased the cut off grades in that we only previously went up to 0.5 but if you look at let's just say 6 there's 4 million ounces at a gram and then we've we've modeled that there's a bit of a 3D model of it on our website in the little video um and then at 0.9 you can see that there's um 2 and a half million ounces at 1.5 they're not all together they're distributed across the power line deposit primarily but it really gives a guide and if if you can find enough of that in your phase one mining pit you know where you actually start um you know you've got what you need to be have an economic project so that's been a real benefit to to be able to model the new resource we're talking to a lot of experts some structural experts helping to understand how how how can we increase our confidence in that high grade and particularly before we go drill it out have we done as much background work as we can and it's been exciting so you know we didn't really know what we were going to do this year and I really wanted to challenge my team to think outside the box and so we've run a bunch of scenarios you know we know this deposit is open we can grow it and I had one shareholder down in bimo said grow it to 10 million ounces that's not too big and I'm like that's pretty big Seven's pretty big um and I'm like okay well we should at least think about that where would we go if we if we wanted to drill and we thought thought we could see another million ounces where would we so we thought about that we've thought about how we would continue to expand this um we really have noticed also that because we um we really focused on the top 200 meters and we now have a 5 kmet wide deposit some of your lowest strip ratio if you've got high grade could actually be at the bottom of your pit so we're we're evaluating where do we see high grade that's actually at the bottom of the pit are there some places where we should be pushing down uh because that's also another way to add ounces right where you're you're potentially and we hadn't thought about we hadn't really been looking at that before because you know rule of thumb 200 m is the depth of an economic open pit but when these things are long life assets and they mine for that that lower material eventually does get mined like Victoria gold now they've drilled what to 850 meters in found mineralization we've drilled one depole that we drilled uh for supporting our our a master's thesis we're doing and sort of understanding some of the temperature gradients from minerology and and other work to figure out where the intrusion is cuz you know this was a very long lived heat heat system yeah hydral system okay so um what you've been describing is a huge amount of kind of optionality and ab many choices that you can many ways that you can go you can um you've got the the market support now with the kind of the your sholder register moving the gold price uh you've got uh decisions to make on when to raise capital you know what's an opportunity time um the Brokers are coming back um they've been a little desperate and um you've also got a whole range of kind of development and kind of action actionable routs that you can do in terms of either drilling more or infi drilling you know expand the envelope or Dr risk or do a combination of the both both metalogical test work um all of this is obviously kind of um brewing and bubbling along uh is is is there a point in the next kind of month or two that you kind of say to the market this is the plan for the year that's exactly what we're working on and having you know the um benefit of talking to a whole bunch of people that have seen projects like this before running our various scenarios internally and then we can improve our odds of success by saying H how can we make that actually better or how can we improve the odds of that being successful um so we know we've got enough money to to drill probably about 6,000 meters with the money in the treasury so and we're we're patient you know we're not looking for any Capital the time the right time will come along and quite frankly my existing shareholders have told me that they'll be there for financings in future because you know we've delivered on what we said we are going to do so I'm not pressured I don't feel pressured to be rushing out and uh doing a financing right now I think we've added a lot of value we're telling people the story about the metal energy about the deposit the work that we're doing internally we know we're going to continue the metal itical work and the Baseline environmental work and that's ongoing now um and that's going to add a lot of value some of those some of that test work if you can increase your recoveries by a percentage or you can decrease capex by understanding something or adding some other process or decrease operating costs by not having to grind quite as fine like some of the the mill options you know we may not need to even um grind as fine as we've done test work for particularly for flotation and then the flotation numbers you know 84% but with 53% gravity recovery it's very high gravity recovery and there was only a 4% Mass pull in that so that you know looks to your your um Capital cost being quite a bit lower than potentially even the CIP Cil um method but we have that's doesn't even include a regrind on the small percentage that's in a concentrate so lots of work in areas that we know we can add to all of those processes um you've also done some heat bleach test work Y which kind of gave 60 to 64 to 70 2% recovery yep um so you've got these kind of two options one is to um uh use a heat bleach kind of slightly lower recovery but um lower operating costs um or to do the kind of the carbon P or the carbon El Lee with a flotation potentially in a kind of gravity circuit which is kind of a more uh a little bit more steel work a little bit more tankage um slightly higher cost kind of um Capital cost um to get started and possibly a little bit High higher operating cost but with a um much higher recovery so those those trade-off studies um those are typically done at a PFS level aren't they um you know I think we'd want to do that before a PA because once you have a PA you can actually start permitting right and so you want the project to stay still through permitting and it'll Guide Understanding you know that will will be important for guiding what Drilling you're doing and and where the infrastructure is going to go because you'll know what infrastructure you need uh which is super important we already will be able to actually start our more advanced um groundwater work this year because we've got a pretty good idea of where the phase one pit will be and that's a huge Advantage we have in that we have the Baseline data if you decided what the project was you could actually with the yukon's permitting process the fact that we're in a brown field with roads and power already on it you could be in construction in four to five years from starting um your assessment um but you need a project to stay still um when are you kind of aiming to do um a scoping study or a PA because the other so the the two big choices or the two really key decisions you've got I think are you know what's the process route but also what's the uh the the the right size what's the right throughput rate yeah um to mine and to uh to process yeah and that's why we've been running each scenario internally we know our model is still pretty rough because it's still a scoping level model but it it looks like there is an optimal um tonnage per day uh for all of them and that gets refined as you change your metal energy as you you know learn more about the deposit um we've run it to kind of understand how much of that high grade we need um in your first few years or higher grade one one gram plus let's just say for for Conta so um that works very valuable and there's not only the option of Mill or Heap Leach there are things like Fort Knox where there's he Leach hybrid yeah so that's also in the mix and we're doing some modeling of that and some of the analysts have done that like cormark uh has done that model and that's where they get their highest irr and they're continuing to model it and it's great to talk to some of the analysts and see what they see um uh Paradigm and cor Mark are both covering us and doing their own models um and you know the other thing that's that's quite interesting is what else is going on around us because you look at Victoria gold they have the Raven deposit 1.7 gram deposit up on the hill just above us 4 kilometers away downhill um they're probably not building a mill up on the hill right it's going to probably go down where the infrastructure is and it could go back and around down to where their Heap Leach is or it could come towards you or it could come towards us so there's a bigger context and these are just discoveries we I think there's going to be more discoveries Victoria has 550 sare km there's a trend they've got their links deposit there are some other targets uh that are kind of in their southern part of their block which they haven't worked on we have our Nitra property which has known intrusions on it and you know from talking to we had a tombstone breakfast and we had a bunch of the experts in these reduced intrusion deposits and it was I always get excited when I talk to them and they say oh you see this here and these are all these plaster mines over there and I'm like yeah I know that that's why we staked it it's an interesting piece of ground so we're also trying to think a little a little bit bigger than ourselves and what's going to go on in the district because there'll probably only be one M that's for gold that will be built in well certainly within 4 kilometers one would hope um so you need to think about that again um so many options um can you kind of synthesize what you're kind of looking to do in I know you haven't kind of come up with a formal plan y but um kind of during the course of 2024 you know what are the kind of the Milestones that um U banan's going to be uh delivering and it might it might be as simple as uh you know in Q2 we're going to come up with a plan you know I don't put too much emphasis on the kind of the detail but just um how do you how do you see the architecture of the year so the drisking on the project level the continued engineering understanding that the how what drives is going to be throughout the year um as we TR start to try to move towards a PA we we will do one before 2025 I'm not you ask me that question before I'm not rushing to a PA because we want a good one you want to get as high IR as you can and also make sure that you've thought about things and I don't want to pin you to a date but it could be in 2025 and it could be in late 2024 well it's not hard to do one that's the time isn't it's the getting the content right that's important right we have to do one by December of 2025 as the final earn in on the property so we have a timeline uh but again they haven't really been appreciated in the market before price started to move uh you saw Pas pasas you put them out and they were usually negative catalysts for well most good news has been a negative Catalyst over the last selling opportunities it's selling opportunities so um so yes we are putting together a plan um and we're being cautious and I want to make sure we continue to to deliver on what we say so yes I'm being a little Cy and not saying here's what the plan is you know we know we're going to continue to do the Baseline work environmental work and we can expand that because we do have a better understanding of the generalities of what the project will be um the Metallurgy we that's we try to do that in series rather than in parallel so that we're learning from the work and we're optimizing how much money we're spending on it because you could spend if I had $2 million to spend on Metallurgy we could move things a lot faster but I don't um eventually we probably will spend another $2 million but you might as well do it so that you're actually learning from it we've got some key things that we've got ongoing now which I think will tell us where we can optimize it um so there could be some interesting news flow from that and we will drill and we can either start drilling here in the winter or we would start in the summer and we've been a little bit I I really want my team because they feel pressure if they want to go drilling they actually have to make sure they've done the analysis to convince me that this is the best option and that's actually kind of fun it it produces a little bit of competitive tension in your own company and it's got to add value I mean it's got to add value and uh just thinking of some you know some of the deep hols they may indicate and kind of show that there's potential at depth but if you've got a uh kind of a shallow mine it might be kind of very far dated ounces and so perhaps drilling that out isn't perhaps the most uh uh economic uh use of your drill meters so yeah we drilled the one Depot but we didn't drill it looking for deep ounces we drilled it to understand the whether where the heat flow direct so we've drilled 650 M vertically and we know it's mineralized so this does have Deep Roots if you were going to drill in the high grade areas you probably wouldn't go deeper than 350 M if you're actually drilling for for ounces that you might add to the pit but there is a a hypothesis that our intrusion is at depth and so if you were to drill a deep hole looking for that that's that's also an option it's a higher risk High reward whole but in this market it's a lot of money to to put into that and and that potential doesn't go away it's just everything's about timing and getting the market timing that's that's the CEO's main job we come back to Market timing and you said this Market and you've described a very kind of um uh responsible approach to kind of 2024 kind looking after your resources and kind of being very careful about the way that you spend your money but the market can change and they might and your shareholders might say you know what we want to accelerate yep here's a big check here's a big check we want to accelerate and you might have your $2 million to do the metalogy um if that comes are you able to accelerate oh absolutely we are set up for that and we've run all the plans because you know where would we drill off the first 2 million ounces indicated versus the first half a million versus how much would it take to to drill off the whole deposit we thought about all of that and we've done a costing actually of what it'll take to get us through through the paa uh and to get that 2 million and indicated plus all the Baseline to get you into permitting and then we've done a longer look what's it going to take to get all the way through permitting and feasibility study so you're ready to make a construction decision so you know we we we've spent a lot of time and used our our winter very well to set ourselves up and because we have infrastructure we're on a road we've already got three drills on site we have 100 person Camp between our two two camps we're really set up to ramp up very quickly in the right environment we've got the plans done so that the drilling would be efficient if that's what we want to do um we know exactly what we need to ramp it up to move it into permitting um I think we're in a pretty good spot and and we've been very careful cautious you know I added the right people to our team I added Kai wallish our our VP of project development and he's you know very systematically you know moving this project forward it's great great to have a right hand we still got James you know who's been so successful um with the geology and you know he's the one kind of really okay how what else can we learn who else can we talk about understanding some of the controls in the higher grade uh to really make sure we get that right good well um it does feel as if the kind of um the gold market is moving I you could see that in the in in the price action but the the mood is infectious um PDC is always that way it's like you come here and it's everybody drinks the Kool-Aid it's the start of the exploration season um for people and um I'm really excited with what we've done in our project it's really nice to get the validation from our shareholders who said yeah that's that's great uh $8 per ounce I don't think we're going to be at that valuation very long good well um Good Luck for 2024 thank you very much sh

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Id: gPvcJBLBrqk

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024