gold news

 [Music] welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing news.com I'm speaking with Barry Bame corporate secretary and board director at West high yield hi Barry good afternoon good to see you again thanks for having me looking forward to chatting with you yeah so maybe let's start our conversation with just an overview of the company for investors that are that may not be familiar with the company sure uh so West high yield resource is an exploration development company of a

critical minerals resource in British Columbia um we have gone through and U identified the resource through our PA and ni 4311 we have 10.6 million tons of magnesium contained just under 19 million tons of um silica and some nickel and iron so uh we're currently at the tail end of the permitting process um we expect to have a permit from the government in the next few weeks and if all is in order and in place we hope to be on the ground actually construction and Mining this year right and in your

last press recent press release you've uh announced a private placement offering and and a loan Amendment could you talk a bit more about that and how these Financial strategies will support your um um you know your projects sure well as as you know in a junior mining uh it's it's not for the faint of heart and you do have to have resilience and and and Resolute in in moving the project forward uh we've been working on the pting process for 6 years and um have been responding to all of the

government and regulatory requirements and and part of what our private placement is is to help us across the Finish Line with uh the various fees associated with that permit and the upcoming uh we'll expect a Reclamation Bond as part of this process so we need to raise those funds in advance of actually getting into cash flow and in that same um note the Korean um Institute of science technology has developed a breakthrough uh technology with uh car compatible magnesium based batteries that's interesting development

what's uh what's the impact of that breakthrough uh to your projects and to your company's uh trajectory well I mean it's it's very interesting for our project specifically because it speaks to the use of magnesium now in these uh commercial batteries that they're looking to bring on stream um the technolog is very exciting because what it does is it allows uh battery uh OEM so so those that need them for cars for example you'll be able to have twice the capacity for half the weight less

volatility potentially in that battery uh it'll reduce range anxiety for consumers and uh as well reduce the cost because magnesium costs a lot less than other critical minerals as a result what you'll see then is more consumer adoption as this energy transition takes place of electric vehicles so that's really exciting I mean critical minerals are so important in in all aspects of our life and there was a recent study where they said that uh the next 30 years of mining of critical minerals is

going to exceed the last 70,000 years and uh you know when you take a cell phone like this it's got a minimum of 25 to 30 critical minerals in it up to 64 depending on the phone that doesn't speak to computers and all of the other things that modern society need and our energy transition needs going forward so I know that there's um you know several other developments or breakthroughs Technologies in in in regards to magnesium batteries but what makes this uh Korean um breakthrough more

specifically significant I I think because uh they're close to commercialization on it and and and we're in a we're in an area right now where there's uh some consumer hesitation about adopting some of these transition strategies like the electric vehicles only because of of cost and how long the B battery May last me and range anxiety so this specific uh battery will help again reduce the cost reduce that range anxiety you're going to have more capacity in your battery with less

weight and probably a safety concern is less volatility potentially as there has been some experience with other battery formats unfortunately uh combusting right so your record Ridge magnesium mine is expected to be shovel ready in 2025 what are the key milestones in time lights that the investor should look out for well the the the most uh the most imminent Milestone that we're looking forward to coming is the actual awarding of the permit and uh we have gone through a very rigorous process over the

last six years with the uh BC mines uh Ministry in British Columbia um and we're at the point now where we have pretty much answered every single regulatory question relative to the mine it's a very simple project it's uh it's just uh blast crush and ship we're taking the ore off site and the reason we can do that without a tailing Pond and and without any need for any processing on site is that our ore is extremely rich we'll use 94% of our ore making it salable uh with uh the two

main components being the magnesium and silica and then nickel and iron so we have little to no waste miss making this probably one of the greenest projects you'll find because there is a limited amount of waste so we're excited to get on the ground and get mining that would be the first mile Stone I guess the next one that they can look for thereafter because construction may take you know around 3 to 4 months to build an access road of which we're fortunate we don't have to spend multi-millions of dollars

in infrastructure set up we're adjacent to a public Highway we only need a couple of kilometers of mine access road and the mine setup so relative to some mines who are in the middle of nowhere and need to build out $200 million of infrastructure to get their mine up and running ours is at surface open pit very simple mining with all of the infrastructure around it so our costs are down to probably a $25 million investment to get the mine up and running which will make a cash flow positive right away interesting well

we'll leave it at that thanks again Barry for taking the time to speak with me thank you for having us um West high yield resources we're on the cusp of some great things we trade on the TSX Venture under whhy and on the Frankfurt exchange at w0 so thank you so much for having me this afternoon and we'll look forward to our next visit yeah you're welcome anytime thank you thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another edition of CEO insights [Music]