(Kitco News) - Bunker Hill Mining (CSE: BNKR) is restarting its namesake mine in northern Idaho, just on the outskirts of the city of Kellogg. Kitco Mining toured the operation in September.
Richard Williams is the executive chair and Sam Ash is the CEO. Both are formerly with Barrick and tout their expertise as turnaround specialists.
Bunker Hill has a long history as a silver producer, with operations beginning in the 1890s. The mine shut in the 1980s and became a Superfund site, a U.S. federal environmental remediation program for industrial sites that require decontamination.
After the clean-up, the former mine entered care and maintenance in 2016-2020. The current owners negotiated purchase.
A prefeasibility study from September outlined a $55 million initial capital cost to restart the mine by the end of 2023. The mine will generate over $25 million of annual average free cash flow from an initial 5-year mine plan based on probable mineral reserves to produce over 315 million pounds of zinc, 145 million pounds of lead, and 3 million ounces of silver at an estimated all-in sustaining cost of 77 cents per payable pound of zinc.
To start production, this fall's main task at Bunker Hill is razing old mine workings to build a new processing plant. The company said it secured a ball mill and ancillary equipment capable of meeting the 1,800 ton per day production throughput rate envisaged in the company's prefasibility study while also supporting a 17% throughput increase to 2,100 tons per day, subject to future engineering and mine planning.
Idaho, the state where Bunker Hill operates, has had a string of recent mining successes. Jervois officially opened in October, the only primary cobalt mine in the U.S. During the same month, Perpetua Resources received a key milestone for its Stibnite gold project in central Idaho, the United States Forest Service preferred alternative. The Stibinite project is also a former Superfund site.
In October, Bunker Hill said it has secured new funding. The company is also receiving a stream from Sprott Private Resource Streaming & Royalty.
