BacTech Greening up the Mining Industry

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Thursday, March 22, 2018

“To make green” can have several meanings, including making something more environmentally friendly or making money.  Toronto’s BacTech Environmental Corp. (CSE:BAC) (OTCPK:BCCEF) is aiming for one by doing the other and looks to be well aligned to meet both goals by bringing modern technologies to the mining industry.

If there is one sector in need of new innovation, it is certainly mining.  While technology has improved, mining is still highly pollutive in many parts of the world that depend upon the industry to keep their economy alive.  For companies and countries big and small, BacTech has a solution with its bioleaching technology for limiting the release of poisonous arsenic and sulphuric acid as a front-end process or remediating tailing piles as an end process.

Bioleaching involves the oxidation of sulphides separated from host rock using gravitation/floatation techniques without the release of deleterious metals into the environment.

While the company goes largely overlooked, as evidenced by its $2 million market cap, BacTech is one of only two companies in the world – Gold Fields (NYSE:GFI, $3 billion market cap) is the other – to develop and deploy bioleaching plants for metal recovery.   BacTech has built/licensed three plants so far that have recovered up to 95% of gold-in-concentrates.

Considering that arcane processing methods for decades would frequently allow up to 20% of metals in sulphides to reach the tailings (waste) pile, the scope of what BacTech could recover is tremendous to say the least.  Unlike traditional mining, it’s no secret where the tailings are, making the precious, base and/or rare earth metals easy pickings (compared to hard-rock mining) if a company has the right technology. In essence, the ore body sits on surface and all the heavy lifting has been done by the previous operator.

BacTech has operations in motion in Canada and South America, as it leverages the wishes of governments to address mining tailings that are damaging the Earth and potentially causing a bottleneck in the industry. 

In Canada, the Ontario government has its sights set on neutralization of arsenic used in mining and has granted BacTech $150,000 towards test work of its process being conducted at the Goodman School of Mines at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada.  To run the bioleaching testing, BacTech sourced 150 kilograms of arsenopyrite concentrate (the term for arsenic/sulphide ore) from floatation plants in Ponce Enriques in southern Ecuador. The initial results of the test work will be out in April and the Ecuador government should be very interested in the results.

These two bodies of work dovetail perfectly together and could provide the catalyst that BacTech has been waiting for, particularly with how it relates to Ecuador.  The Ponce Enriques project covers an area of the country dependent upon mining with a real problem on hand in that tailings are near capacity, which is threatening the closing of mining operations.

BacTech has met with the Ministry of Mines and proposed its bioleaching technology as part of a broader plan to reduce the tailings burden and generate income.

The plan involves trucking ore down the mountain to a bioleach plant constructed on the coastal plain.  Subsequent to processing, the tailings would be deposited and capped in a lined tailings facility.  Due to these tailings being processed historically with arcane methods by artisanal miners, high-grade gold is still trapped in the tailings, ranging between 2-6 grams per tonne.

Again, these are the tailings and ores that are being tested at Laurentian University.

While that evaluation is happening, BacTech is working with the Bolivian government through a revenue-sharing agreement to process tailings from a mill complex in Telamayu.  Here, the metals to be recovered are primarily tin, silver and copper.  A NI-43-101 resource calculation prepared by an independent consultant estimated the tailings have an aggregate value of US$250 million in situ. Given the amount of infrastructure that exists onsite capital costs to retrofit the existing plant should be inexpensive compared to developing a new mine.

At this project, BacTech is initially working on the tailings from a pile called “Antiguo,” with the option for the rights to the tailings from a larger pile at the mill site called “Nuevo.”  These tailings (80+ years’ worth) are suspected to contain low-grade silver, as well as the rare earth minerals indium, gallium and germanium.

If these projects and evaluations prove BacTech’s bioleaching process can benefit both owners and the environment, the company should be off and running due to the fact that Telamayu was just one of 26 projects that was initially offered to BacTech.

The bioleaching process may be greener than legacy processes, but it isn’t exactly brand new.  BacTech does, however, find itself at the intersection of mining and technology through a recent pact with Blockmine Development, a company focused on introducing blockchain technology into the mining industry.

The two companies are working together on technology to create an immutable digital record to document the supply chain of mined metals to ensure best practices are used to protect the environment and worker’s rights, similar to methods being used to correct the infamous “blood diamonds” coming from Africa.  The fact is that in today’s interconnected, digitized world, consumers and advocacy groups are laying the hammer to companies for not vetting supply chains properly.  The type of technology that BacTech and Blockmine are working to create will likely be an industry standard in the future as part of the ongoing green initiative worldwide.

Whether it’s cleaning tailings from a century ago or working on the technology of tomorrow, BacTech is actively covering neglected areas of need in the mining industry, a business model that one day soon should command a lot more attention for the company that it is receiving today.

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