North Bay Resources Inc. (OTC:NBRI) earlier this week announced the successful production of a high-grade gold and platinum concentrate at its Bishop Gold Mill in California.
CEO Jared Lazerson joined Proactive to discuss the milestone, highlighting the strategic integration of the recently acquired Mt. Vernon Gold mine with the Bishop Gold Mill, in which it holds a majority stake.
Proactive: We’re talking about the first gold concentrate that you’ve been able to produce. The whole basis of the company was to create this opportunity where you could take other feedstock and really get some cash flow going. So, remind everyone a little bit about the operation itself.
Jared Lazerson: I got involved with North Bay a short time ago, in February of this year. We’ve been able to rapidly advance. Our first major acquisition was the Bishop Gold Mill, which is what you’re referring to. We went with a small production model and acquired two projects. One was in British Columbia, an advanced project with a half ounce of gold at surface. Recently, we acquired the Mt. Vernon Gold Mine in Sierra County, which is just north of where we’re at with the Bishop Mill in Inyo County. This is a developed, permitted mine, but without significant processing facilities. So, it’s a perfect match with our facility at Bishop—high grade, small footprint mine, production capacities at both facilities match up to around 100 tons per day. That’s the mill capacity, and the mine capacity can do that and maybe a little bit more. So all the numbers match up.
The real question was whether the processing—the grind, gravity—and we also have a float circuit at the mill, but does this match up with the ore at Mt. Vernon? We thought it would, which is why we moved ahead. But checking this box off is really huge for us, producing a concentrate. The key piece with the concentrate is that it’s coming out in gravity, so we may run a float circuit on it, but it doesn’t look like that’s necessary. So, yeah, short and sweet, we produced a high-grade concentrate.
So, you’re pretty happy with the numbers that you were seeing, with gold, platinum, and silver? Platinum, in particular, hasn’t really been discussed much in this area. You’re going to do some more work on that as well?
Glad you mentioned that. The area is not known for platinum. I assume that’s because the gold has been so high grade. This is the original California gold field, where the California Gold Rush occurred, both in 1849, the well-known one, and then there was a further one later on. The area produced and still produces, but really produced solidly through the 70s, platinum. It is very rare to have platinum that extracts easily through gravity, so it is unique in that aspect. It’s looking like the grade is coming in at around 1 to 1, so a very significant amount of platinum. One concentrate circuit actually produced greater platinum than gold, another one less so. We’ll see what our final mix concentrate is, but regardless, it’s significant. As a potential buyer, more than anything to increase the value, obviously, platinum at $1,000 an ounce is very significant. Whether it increases the final value by 10, 20%, or upwards of 50%, we’re very happy, and we’re going to spend a lot of time in the next little bit evaluating the platinum.
The main point, again, as an operator and mill owner, is can the platinum be extracted, and that’s what’s occurred in significant quantities. I think we got up to 17oz of platinum against 11oz of gold in one sample. So, very interesting and very exciting. The area is not known for it, so as part of our acquisition strategy and monetization strategy, we will continue to look for platinum. It’s a nice surprise. This business has a lot of potential downside, but when you get an upside break, it really makes for a nice day. From here on in, we’re really back to work. We’re in startup on both the mine and the mill. Test ore will come shortly. We’re just getting through a final inspection for production at the mine here.
It’s a very exciting time. This concentration step cannot be understated in terms of extraction, which means green light. We don’t see any additional technical issues in terms of the concentrate. Basically now, and we actually have a furnace that we’ve just started up at the mill, so the concentrate will now be put in the furnace and then poured off into doré bars for gold and silver and buttons for platinum. There’s a refinery in Reno, which is near to us—within two hours, we can have it at the refinery and monetized.
