Borealis Mining: Gold Production Today, Sandman Next

Trevor Hall (0:16)

All right, it's a real pleasure to welcome in Mr. Kelly Malcolm here, CEO of Borealis Mining Company. They do trade on the venture with a symbol BOGO and on the OTCQB with BORMF. Kelly, welcome to Colorado, a Beaver Creek Precious Metal Summit. Unlike anything you've actually had to present here, well, it's been a huge year for you guys.

Kelly Malcolm (0:37)

It is a wonderful conference. It's a big year for us. And honestly, our big thing we're talking about here is that we are now, we talk about junior gold mining companies. We are actually a junior gold mining company. We're mining, we're gonna be making lots, relatively lots of money, pouring lots of gold.

Trevor Hall (0:55)

You're not a microcap junior explorer.

Kelly Malcolm (0:57)

We are a junior gold producer.

Trevor Hall (1:00)

That's gotta feel good.

Kelly Malcolm (1:01)

It does feel really good.

Trevor Hall (1:02)

You've restarted mining at Borealis, generated record quarterly revenue of just over $6 million US, reported from the previous quarter. What has the operation taught you about the difference between the restart plan on paper and actually operating a gold mine?

Kelly Malcolm (1:19)

There's a lot of lessons in these things. And particularly when, and this conference is fun because you meet such a funny mix of people. You'll meet with mining companies, meet with big fund managers, meet with guys that are 70, have done this 25 times before. But the question that always comes up, and, oh, you just started in February, how's it going? With a little laugh, because it's much more challenging than one would have expected on paper. But it's ironed out now, we're ticking, we're firing all cylinders.

The biggest hurdle, or the biggest thing that I learned was putting rocks on a heap leach pad that's already been in operation. So we're about 120 feet above ground. It takes a lot longer for that gold to make its way through the pad than it would in a lab setting. So our ore, for example, is 90 days, the proper leach cycle from when you first start introducing cyanide to when you get your max, or your expected recovery, which is 73 or so percent for us in oxides. In reality, because the fluids have to work their way through that huge pile of rock, crushed material, and other water that's already in the pad, so you're kind of introducing this beautiful high-grade gold fluid into a huge, diluted ocean of rock and water. It took a lot longer for what we call the PLS, or the Pregnant Leach Solution Grade, to start cranking up. So that was definitely one of the bigger experiences. We knew it, we expected it, but just living it, I was like, okay, we've really got to start cranking this thing up. So that was one, just optimizing the plant, little things.

Contractors are expensive is something I've learned as well.

Trevor Hall (3:11)

So are you confident, do you feel like things are moving steadily and progressing steadily day to day?

You're not wondering, okay, what kind of surprises is going to hit my inbox when I wake up tomorrow morning? Or is it somewhere in between? Where are you at right now?

Kelly Malcolm (3:26)

We're now in a position where I'm not, I'm happily-

Trevor Hall (3:30)

You're sleeping?

Kelly Malcolm (3:31)

Happily promoting Borealis in the conference now. We're very comfortable. Teams dialed in, everyone's owning their respective divisions, departments, jobs, and people are dialed in. So no major concerns right now.

Trevor Hall (3:47)

Okay. So I do want to talk about that heap leap operation, obviously pre-existing, you didn't have to actually construct a new one, lots of advantages, but where does that give you the greatest capital advantage? Where does it create optional other limitations somewhere else?

Kelly Malcolm (4:04)

So the limitation we just talked about, the negative factor of going back into an old heap is that it's going to be, it'll take longer to get the gold out than starting fresh right on a liner, putting your ore in, and getting recoveries in 90 days. So it's a longer process. That will decrease once that big mountain of rock and water becomes less barren, there's a lot less of that just rainwater that's been in there more gold solution, so I don't expect that to be a problem going forward. Certainly, the benefit is just like you said, it was an immediate, okay, we're turning on the cyanide today, putting on Crush Rock.

We would, one of the things that we'll be talking about to the market in the future and putting some numbers around it is we will be probably working to construct a new heap leach pad in the next year or so or two.