Interviews from Yukon: Willem Middelkoop on Monetary Madness and Tara Christie on Banyan Gold
Trevor Hall This is Trevor Hall with Mining Stock Daily. I am standing with my new Dutch friend, The Flying Dutchman himself-- huge Ajax supporter, probably the largest I know, Mr. Willem Middelkoop from Commodity Discovery Funds. Willem, nice to finally meet you in person. We got to spend a few days together up here in the Yukon. You had mentioned to me--you've been putting money here for about 15 years but you've never visited some of these projects, never been the Yukon. So after a few days of flying around the territory, what are your initial thoughts?
Willem Middelkoop Yeah. Well it is an amazing district--historic district, of course. So I'm very happy to finally be here. We've been investing here for over a decade, one great example is A-Tech Resources, a wonderful discovery 10 years ago. District-scale, well we started our fund in 2008 and that turned out to be the top of the commodity cycle. And all these companies like A-Tech, you know, they all had to survive in the last few years with the downturn. And we were quite fortunate as a fund--we have seen that the inflow every year. So we survived the downturn pretty well. But the value you can buy now, not only in the Yukon but overall is incredible. I'm very happy to finally be in the Yukon to see it myself. We are in Dawson now that has an amazing history and it's is an incredible journey.
Trevor Hall So over dinner the other night, you and I were chatting about a gold bull market. And all of a sudden, you just kind of dropped your silverware. And you could see the energy in your face--you were like it's started. We are already in it, this is not a debate anymore. What are your thoughts here?
Willem Middelkoop Well, I'm a little older than you are, I'm 57. I'm a student of monetary history, I'm a student of economic cycles. I've been a financial economic journalist for quite some. I worked for Dutch TV. So I've done my homework. And I became very positive on the mining and the gold and silver sector in the early 2000s. I had some profits in real estate. I started to invest in gold and silver companies, and my friends laughed at me in the 2000s because gold was nowhere. It was less than $300 an ounce and I was afraid for all this money printing and--I wrote some books in the Netherlands. My first book was published in 2007, warning about the coming crisis--well it came within 12 months. And I was told by my readers and my investors you should put some of your money in gold and silver as atch on the monetary madness. Well, we've seen the monetary madness in the last few years, non yielding bonds are now about 9 trillion non yielding bonds. And what happened is gold went down. Gold went down 40% since 2011. Silver went down 70%. Gold-silver mining shares went down 80-90%. So this is a wonderful opportunity because the monetary matters will continue and you should hedge yourself and buy real assets. So I always tell investors buy everything the government can't print. Well, I think more and more people will start to open their eyes and wake up. And what I'm hearing is there's a lot of new money now coming into the market. We see it within our fund. Today we see a break out of the silver price--this was long overdue. And often the real recovery starts to once the gold and silver ratio breaks. So when silver increases more in value than gold and that's what we're seeing now and that's why I'm very very positive on the short term and medium term and the long term future, because I think we're at the start of a generational boom marketing, gold and commodities.
Trevor Hall Let me ask you about the overall market. I mean, the U.S. markets are still very strong. The U.S. dollar is still strong. A lot of analysts that I follow is pointing towards Europe right now as potential foreshadowing of what could transition into the U.S. I think it was last week we got the news from Deutsche Bank, spinning off their bad assets into a new bad bank. What's your thoughts--are you following the European financial system right now to see what could happen and hit the U.S., and what's the time frame like that?
Willem Middelkoop When my first book was published in 2007, everybody told me U.S. is strong. Much stronger than the other economies. Look what happened within 12 months: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac were down. Down and out. Ford and General Motors were down and out--had to be rescued by the government. AIG, large insurer was out. Half of Wall Street went broke. So don't believe the hype that U.S. has a very strong economy.
Trevor Hall Feed us in--What are some things you're looking at that really shows, like right now this week that trend continues on coming down the pipeline.
Willem Middelkoop Well look at the monetary mess we're in. You know we never solved the first credit crisis.
Trevor Hall The overall debt. The overall federal debt.
Willem Middelkoop We had a credit crisis because there was a crisis about too much credit. There's much more credit around now. So we never solved that crisis and the only way to not experience a total collapse of the economic system was to bring interest down to 0%. And now we have 9 trillion in negative yielding bonds. So the mess this is still the same. The mess is even larger. And now the economy turns south again. We see that in ACR. We see that in Europe. We see it in the U.S. as well. Things will get very exciting again.
Trevor Hall Well I just get the sign that we have meetings to go to so I'm going to let you go. But thanks, Willem, it was a pleasure to get to meet you in person and have a chat.
Willem Middelkoop Thank you.
Trevor Hall Welcome to Mining Stock Daily. This is Trevor Hall and I'm sitting with Tara Christie right now. She is the President and CEO of Banyan Gold. Banyan trades on the TSX Venture Exchange with the symbol BYN. Tara, thank you for joining us on the show for the first time.
Tara Christie Thank you very much. And thank you for coming to Dawson City.
Trevor Hall So I was able to fly over your property yesterday on my way to the Alexco Project and it's a pretty interesting project because as far as infrastructure goes, you can visibly see it but I don't think too many people in the Yukon have it as good as you guys have it on Banyan, but tell us why.
Tara Christie So you actually drove through it as well. You flew over it and you could see the aerial extent but when you went to Alexco you actually drove right through the heart of it and right beside where we've built a mineralization model and where we plan to develop a resource. When you look at our property, we have we have the main highway through it. We had the three phase power line that goes to the hydroelectric dam. We also benefit from Victoria Gold's main haul road--turns off right from the highway through the center of our property there. We've got their switching station that they just built. That connects to the main power line which is a huge advantage to us. It's right by where our main exploration area is and that provides us a really strategic advantage. This is a district with Alexco Resources immediately adjacent to us and they're a huge silver district which was a very large memorializing system. And Victoria Gold just off to the north and the gold that's on our property is likely related to the same intrusion system that created Victoria Gold. But we're going to have a heap leach mine 40km down the road one way and an operating mill 10 minutes down the road. Both Alexco and Victoria are strategic partners of Banyan-- they're our largest shareholders. Alexco has a 10 or 8% shareholding in Banyan and Victoria Gold is a 5% shareholder. And we're able to keep our exploration costs low and actually benefit from their technical expertise by sharing some resources. We're able to stay at Alexco's camp--use their core logging facilities, they have some brilliant geologists who certainly know the Yukon in this district and have been exploring it for a long time. So we benefit from the wealth of their knowledge and the same is with Victoria Gold. Our V.P. of Exploration is very closely aligned with Victoria Gold and our geologists are able to really share the knowledge and understanding of this, these really large system--it is a new--a district with Victoria Gold coming online, I believe that mine will produce for a very long time.
Trevor Hall So I asked Clynton Nauman yesterday kind of about the district and how important the Victoria Gold project coming online and starting to produce-- how important it is, not only for the district but also for the Territory, in general. But if there's anybody that's going to benefit more than anybody else, it seems like you and Banyan are going to really capitalize on all of it.
Tara Christie Absolutely. Having a heap leach mine just down the road. It's going to be fabulous for us particularly since you know our, well the model that we have there for the mineralization is that it would be a heap leach open pit minable project. And that's a bit forward looking because we're we're still in the process of developing the resource, but having watched the Eagle Project in Victoria Gold from exploration through permitting, through feasibility, and now building it--I can envision the same thing for our Aurex-McQuesten property. And Banyan actually has two properties. We've got the one that's right up there and you're Mayo and we also have one down near Watson Lake, which has also benefits from having a road, being a very large property with extensive mineralization that could host the type of project that could be developed into a mine. And that's what we are looking for, are those projects that have the size of land package, existing infrastructure which we can envision--could be taken right from exploration up to being a mine. Remote locations are more challenging. They take longer to permit and they're a lot more expensive. So having that benefit of infrastructure is really an advantage to us.
Trevor Hall So I'm unfamiliar with the story but how did you acquire this land?
Tara Christie So the Aurex-McQuesten property, we acquired in 2016, just after I became the CEO. I'd been on the Board of Banyan since 2012. I have a long history in mining and in the Yukon. Banyan was looking for a new CEO in 2016 and I just had sold some private land that I'd been working on and my other projects had been successfully wrapped up, so it seemed like a great time to take on being the CEO. I knew about the McQuesten--known gold mineralization, there's actually a miner who hand-mined back some 2-ounce plus material for--back in the 1980s and so I'd known about it. And interestingly my family purchased the placer claims that underlie part of the Aurex-McQuesten and they're largely--there was likely gold there because of the McQuesten project so I've known about the gold there for quite a long time. I knew Clynt had part of it at Alexco. And when I became the CEO, I went to talk to him about it and he saw it really as a perfect alignment of stars with the good relationship that we have with both Alexco and Victoria because Victoria had the other adjacent piece--the Arex-McQuesten. And if somebody was going to really put the land package together and explore across the property boundary and add the mineralization that we have developed our model on really does occur and where that property boundary was--So we were able to broker two deals with them to put them put the package together. And we now have both Alexco and Victoria as strategic partners, which is our shareholders which gives us a great advantage there. We've got the benefit of their knowledge. There are going to be the miners in this district. And you said that Victoria needs to succeed and we all--even the mining industry needs a successful startup for Victoria Gold and it's great to see them on track for a first gold production in September. And then we--you know we all want to see them actually hit commercial production, their targets and that would be great news for the Yukon. The Mayo area is going to drive the Yukon economy for years to come if that mine continues to be successful.
Trevor Hall It'd be a very positive thing for the town of Mayo as well, right?
Tara Christie It's hugely positive town, for the town of Mayo. I actually have a home in Mayo. And you know I really believe in spending time in the community and building relationships where where I work. So I've seen the positive changes even with the construction of Eagle. There's more selection in the local store. There's more vegetables--you know it's fresher. You see those small things that continue to grow. Businesses are starting--new small businesses are opening up which really is a great opportunity for people. You're seeing people move home who've moved away. A lot of the you know the youth who leave and get educated, they get jobs elsewhere and don't come back. But now there's going to be high skills jobs available for them to be living in the community, working at Victoria Gold.
Trevor Hall And you kind of mentioned it earlier but you and your family have quite the legacy here in the Yukon. For people who are maybe unfamiliar with the Christie name, give us a little bit of history of the family and the history of mining here.
Tara Christie So my father's a PhD Geologist. So I grew up out in the field with him, out with a pack sack and living in tents and collecting soil samples from as soon as I was old enough to carry a pack sack, here in the Yukon. We also did a bit of work in British Columbia and Alaska. But it was in the early 1980s when my father first really got drawn to the Yukon and it was for placer mining. He had some other partners and you know we started placer mining and I think I drove my first bulldozer when I was about eight. So I started out and then you know from having partners we grew into having our own family operation which actually became one of the largest producers in the Yukon. There's about 10 large operations that produce--about 80% of the placer gold that's produced comes from those operations. And we were in that top 10 and it varies what spot you're in year by year depending on where you're mining and how much how much you spend on stripping ground and preparing ground. So you know I spent 20 years doing that. I also ran a very successful consulting business doing community relations, permitting and worked all across the North from Nunavut to the Northwest Territories and in Alaska. I even did a little bit of work down in Tanzania on placer mining and learned how fabulous it is in the Yukon. We have infrastructure. We have a permitting process that works. We have--you know you don't worry about your safety. It's easy to do purchase supplies and get them in compared to that. So it's like, wow, you know actually things are pretty good in the Yukon. I started being involved in the hard rock business, very early, but joined public company boards in about 2006. So I have been involved in other public companies and now certainly running this one.
Trevor Hall Well thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you giving us a rundown of Banyan and love the things happening but specifically--you know I think it's very important because as you are one of the most familiar people with this territory that I think you're involved in the Junior Mining Sector--just because you grew up here. So that's really important and I think there's a lot of--sometimes there may be is a little distrust when somebody comes up from Toronto or Vancouver and wants to start a project but not in your case and your district looks really good too.
Tara Christie It's a very exciting time to be exploring in the Yukon. I think we're really well positioned. The price of gold--we hope to ride a little bit on the coattails of Victoria Gold as they go into production. And I think it'll be an interesting time. So I'm glad you're up here taking a look around and getting to know people.
Trevor Hall We will be paying close attention. That's Tara Christie. She is the President and CEO of Banyan Gold which is traded with the symbol BYN on the TSX Venture Exchange.
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