Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals / Gold Stocks

Banyan Gold (TSX-V: BYN)(OTC: BYAGF) CEO Tara Christie on Hitting Visible Gold on 30k Meter Drill Program

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of the very, very busy Banyan Gold (TSX-V: BYN)(OTC: BYAGF), Ms. Tara Christie. Tara, it's great to have you back on. How are you today?

Tara Christie: I'm doing great. Spring is coming. Drills are turning and we're raring to go.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right into it. Gold is at $3,300 an ounce. Funds and funding managers that prior to this cycle had shunned the idea of having gold as a part of the portfolio to hedge against volatility and a global monetary reset all of a sudden are coming around. And so with that being said, I couldn't think of a better time to have you on to talk about your fully funded 30,000-meter diamond drill program that you have now announced the mobilization of. I would love to get into the details and just talk to me about the approach and how you take advantage of $3,300 gold that looks to be going higher.

Tara Christie: Well, it's pretty exciting. I think most of us in the gold business have always thought gold prices might get here, but this is kind of what we've worked our careers for and certainly to be sitting with a 7 million ounce resource, which we know we can continue to grow, where we know we've just had that high grade discovery we made at the end of 2024 between the dike and the meta sedimentary host rocks where we had 16 meters of 9.32 just at 65 meters of depth. We're following up on that with one of our drills. We also did some exciting geophysics last year and given us some regional targets as well as significant expansion potential right around AurMac.

So we've got three drills turning for almost a month now. So we've got 19 holes drilled and over 4,500 meters already. We really hit it hard while the snowpack's still there. So some of the holes that we drilled first were strategic based on where you need to drill when it's still frozen. Now we're moving into the holes that we'll be able to drill and we'll drill right through Spring freshet. We're really good at planning where we can put our drills in 30,000 meters and we're adapting our plan as we go. We're not only funded for this year, but that raise that we did gave us $24 million. So that means we're funded for drilling this year and into the fall, we're funded for our PEA in Q4 and then we're funded to drill into 2026, which is pretty unique. They can always move that drilling forward, but right now we're planning 20 to 30,000 meters in 2026 as well.

Gerardo Del Real: I remember chatting with you, I want to say mid-January, maybe late January, and you were so excited about meeting with the team to talk exploration plans and targets and de-risking targets. How satisfying is it to finally have the drills turning and to have such an ambitious program?

Tara Christie: Oh, it is really satisfying. The truth teller is the drill. You can all kinds of great ideas, and of course, we've built a team, added our new VP of exploration, Duncan Mackay, which brings a wealth of experience along with some of our advisors. We all really dug into the data. We're continuing to dig into the data. You don't just stop as you get more information, you continue to build out and improve your plan. So yeah, I love this time of year. I think everybody in the mining business and geology business, you have the two conferences at the beginning of the year and they really set the stage as well when you're sharing ideas and getting excited for the market and to be drilling in these gold prices and we'll have significant results through the summer and into the fall is pretty exciting.

Gerardo Del Real: You've been drilling for a bit now, so I'm going to ask you the annoying question that always is asked after the drill bits start turning. When do you anticipate assays? How's it going with the labs?

Tara Christie: Well, I'd like to under-promise and over-deliver. So it also takes time to properly log your holes and we did just move to a whole new database, logging system, server system, which one will increase consistency, give us better real-time information. So pretty excited about that. And when people come and look at the quality of our data that's going to put us head and shoulders about where we were, and that was a huge implementation that we did this year and we've made that transition successfully. But labs are saying three weeks, which probably means a month from when they actually get the samples and we don't just drill a hole and then rush it off to the lab. We get enough holes to get a truckload of materials and then send them off to the lab after we've logged them and cut them. So saying probably June, maybe late May, we'll start to get some results. We can tell when we hit mineralization. As you know, reduced intrusion deposits there, these discordant sheeted veins are characteristic of it. And yet we see visible gold in our holes just like their deposits. Less so in Airstrip, which is a skarn-type deposit.

And we actually did for the first time ever intersect visible gold in Airstrip mineralization where it intersected with Powerline mineralization. So following up on some of this hybrids, we're pretty excited to see what the assay results of that bring back. So I think we're off to a great start and you can see the styles of mineralization as you drill these holes. So for us, we're guided by looking at the strength of that mineralization as much as by the assay.

Gerardo Del Real: Exciting times. You're sitting on 7 million ounces of gold at the very least, and then look, every single day it seems like those gold ounces are worth a whole heck of a lot more. Excited for 2025. I know you've worked really, really hard to put yourself in a position and shareholders in a position to really benefit from this environment. Looking forward to assays, looking forward to having you back on. Anything else to add to that?

Tara Christie: No, just excited to be able to say we're finally following up on that high grade from airstrip. We're expanding power line, we're testing some regional targets. That all is, I think going to be really exciting for us as we move. And we've been patient to get here. We're in a great capital position with some fabulous shareholders, including a great new shareholder that I think is going to really help us get some momentum in 2025.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, looking forward to seeing that build. Looking forward to having you back on. Thank you again.

Tara Christie: Thank you.

Click here to see more from Banyan Gold