Berenguela’s Silver, Copper & Manganese Story Takes Shape

Trevor Hall (0:18)

Welcome back to the Precious Metal Summit here in Beaver Creek. We are going to get an update, long overdue update here from Aftermath Silver. They trade on the Venture Exchange with AAG and on the OTC-QX with AAGFF. And I promise you, we will try to keep the English footy banter with my friend Ralph Rushton here to a minimum. Ralph, good to see you. Welcome back to Colorado.

Ralph Rushton (0:42)

Good to see you. I'm sorry, I'm still a Chelsea fan.

Trevor Hall (0:44)

Well, you know, it's been a little painful a couple of years, but I think maybe there's some light at this tunnel, though. Let's talk about the Berenguela project in Peru. It's been a long time since we talked about this, a long update, maybe for somebody coming into the Aftermath story for the first time.

What is Berenguela today, and what do you think the market most commonly misunderstands about this project?

Ralph Rushton (1:07)

Berenguela is a silver copper manganese deposit in southern Peru. It's been known since the turn of the last century. It was actually mined by a bunch of guys from Liverpool in the early 1900s. They were after high grade silver. We are looking at the project as a potential critical metals producer. So the full suite silver copper manganese and some zinc as well.

What people, I think, fail to understand is whilst the chemistry is relatively complex because of the manganese, with the change in utility of manganese over the last 10 to 20 years, and it's now a critical battery component, the knowledge of the chemistry of manganese has evolved to the point where these projects are now minable and processable. So you can actually produce a manganese, a commercial manganese product from all like we see at Berenguela.

Trevor Hall (2:00)

Is that going to drive the project economics, the manganese?

Ralph Rushton (2:04)

Yes, a large potential proportion of the revenue will be from manganese, but the focus on the early years of the project, we're doing the pre-feasibility engineering at the moment. The focus in the first five to six years will be maximizing silver production.

Trevor Hall (2:23)

Oh, okay. Why maximizing that?

Ralph Rushton (2:26)

Because manganese is a commodity we need off-take agreements. To get an off-take agreement, you need a commercial quantity of the material for the battery manufacturers to test. So it's not going to be necessarily possible to just jump straight into manganese production.

We need to make some, give it to the battery manufacturers and let them do what they do with it, and give it the credentials that we need to be able to sell it.

Trevor Hall (2:51)

What does an end product look like at Berenguela?

Ralph Rushton (2:54)

How do you mean?

Trevor Hall (2:55)

Like, what will you be producing? A concentrate or a different concept of concentrates with the manganese?

Ralph Rushton (3:01)

So the flow sheet we're looking at at the moment is essentially at the project site, there'll just be a mine. We won't be doing any processing at Berenguela itself. We have road rail and power nearby, so the material will be shipped to the coast. The reagents we need are at the coast, a port called Matarani in southern Peru.

The objective is to produce silver dory, so silver metal.

You were then produced, you can electrowind copper. Basically, you get the rock into solution using acid. You produce the silver using a Merrill Crowe circuit on what's left in the bottom of the tank. And then you're left with the liquid. That liquid is enriched in manganese, copper, zinc, iron. We put it through a series of steps to produce copper metal, and then an iron, zinc concentrate, sulfide concentrate. And then you produce manganese sulfate via crystallization of the liquid that's left in the tank. So it's a complex flow sheet, but it works.

Trevor Hall (3:58)

Is there a similar operation you're replicating here? Anybody else in the world doing something very similar?

Ralph Rushton (4:08)

In Southern Africa, Giani Metals built a pilot plant to produce manganese sulfate. They were working with the South African government.

The engineer that's doing the design work for us, overseeing the hydromete process for us, was heavily involved in the design of that plant. So he's been through it before. South 32 are looking at a similar project in the US. There's a small producer in Peru that's using the same flow sheet. So it's technology that's been proven.

Trevor Hall (4:36)

Okay, so obviously on your way with that PFS, what's the important questions here that you still need to be answered before that PFS can really provide that deep dive?