The opportunity to interview Bayhorse (BHS.V) CEO, Graeme O’Neill popped up. Yes, I just wrote about BHS, but chatting with the man himself was irresistible.
O’Neill has travelled to the Bayhorse Mine to oversee the mobilization of an IP survey of Bayhorse’s Idaho property (and a section of the BHS property in Oregon). But there is far more going on than that.
“I very much wanted to check on the state of the mine and the mill,” said O’Neill. “Which created the opportunity to have our new director, Christos Doulis, get up to speed on the mine and the mill. Great guy with a lot of smart questions and some great ideas. He looked at everything and, for a finance guy, had a real understanding of what we’ve accomplished.”
A recent press release stated that Bayhorse was shipping samples of its flotation concentrate to Allihies Engineering for Antimony Leach Testing, something I know is a very deep interest of O’Neill’s. “The mineralization at the Bayhorse mine is primarily tetrahedrite (silver, copper, antimony zinc),” explained O’Neill. “It is what is known as “refractory” material because it has a lot of sulphur binding the metals. To liberate the metals conventionally, the sulphur has to be roasted off. It’s expensive and environmentally nasty. Not making our Mine have the low environmental impact we set out to achieve.”
“Our original plan was to ship the flotation concentrate to an overseas smelter,” explained O’Neill. “We are getting a high-value concentrate from our mill, which makes a journey across the Pacific worthwhile. Especially with $50 plus silver. But I wanted to look at alternatives. Particularly as roasting means you not only lose the sulphur, but you also lose the antimony. Which is currently selling for $8.24 a pound.”
“I was aware of the Sunshine process which, in simple terms, breaks the tetrahedrite down chemically. As I investigated that process, I came across Allihies Engineering up in Montana,” said O’Neill. “Allihies has worked with Americas Gold and Silver using its proprietary, selective industrial Alkaline Selective Leaching hydrometallurgical technology to pull the antimony from tetrahedrite from its Galena Complex in Idaho. That rock is very similar to the material from the Bayhorse Mine so I got in touch with Allihies and we’ve sent off samples.”
O’Neill is optimistic that the Allihies leaching process will work as well with the Bayhorse concentrate as it did with Americas Gold and Silver material, which is to say an extraction rate for antimony of up to 99%. The sulphur also drops out and, after leaching, you are left with easily recoverable silver, copper and zinc.
“Of course, before we sent the samples to Allihies we needed to XRF the material to get a baseline,” said O’Neill. “We hadn’t used our XRF on the flotation concentrate from the mill because we had been using what’s known as development material, which is not really representative of the material we will be mining.”
“Quite honestly, I was astounded at the XRF results (press release),” said O’Neill. “Average in the samples of 135 ounces of silver per ton. But the other metals were a surprise: 20.6% copper, 19.5% antimony, 40% zinc and 1.6% lead. Trace, but possibly recoverable, amounts of gold. Our floatation concentrate, even from development material, is packed with metal. Now we want to see what sort of recoveries are possible with the Allihies leaching. If those recoveries are solid, we’ll be looking at putting a leaching circuit into our mill in Payette.”
O’Neill has always been looking for ways to maximize the economics of the Bayhorse Mine. “The Steinert ore sorter was a critical first step,” said O’Neill. “Leaving at least 80% of the barren rock at the mine makes trucking the sorted material much less expensive. Having our own 60-70 ton per day mill means we are able to produce high value concentrate, which, when we were looking at shipping the material across the Pacific, reduced the costs and increased the value of the shipped material. But if we are able to leach the antimony, get rid of the sulphur and other deleterious materials, we should be able to recover the silver, copper and zinc directly and have direct ship material. Why throw $8.50 a pound antimony away? With our current XRF scans, that is 400 pounds a ton. You do the math.”
O’Neill is very aware of the market for Bayhorse shares. “We are going to have news right through to the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, which Christos wants me to attend this year. Probably not a booth, but a suite or some investor events. We’ll have the preliminary results of the IP survey in the next four to six weeks. We should also have the results of the leaching trial. Then, the detailed IP results will give us a good idea of what the VTEM blobs over at the Pegasus project in Idaho are indicating. Our senior geologists, who have done the mapping and sampling over at Pegasus, are pretty sure the mineralization at the Bayhorse Mine extends across the Snake at the north end of Pegasus. More silver pearls for our string? I don’t know. Our geos think it is a very good possibility.”
I asked O’Neill about his own plans. “Immediately, up to Vancouver to meet with investors, talk to Rick Low, our Chief Financial Officer, and plan a marketing push. Then, Director Mark Abrams and I are going to the Idaho Mining Association’s Annual conference. Meet the neighbours,” said O’Neill. “And speaking of neighbours, we just found out that the land to the south east of our ground in Idaho has been staked by Kennecott Copper. A good neighbour to have.”
“More generally,” said O’Neill. “Bringing Christos onto the Board of Directors gives us depth in the Toronto financial markets which we’ve never had before. I am very much looking forward to stepping back a little from a few of my multiple roles and bringing on the “new blood” we need to get the Bayhorse mine across the finish line.”
“I’ve seen silver trade at $12 an ounce and our model at that time suggested the Bayhorse mine would be profitable. $50 silver, even with significantly higher costs, will very likely make the mine very profitable indeed,” said O’Neill. “The ore sorter, the mill and now the prospect of using leaching to produce direct ship material have all added to that bottom line. It’s been a longer journey than I had expected. Along the way we’ve expanded the potential resource at the Bayhorse mine and opened up very prospective ground in Idaho. I believe the Bayhorse is getting ready to gallop, and Pegasus is testing it’s wings.”