SMC-2026-03-22
Good morning,
I missed a couple of weeks due to PDAC and the subsequent avalanche of follow-ups from the many people who visited our booth.
This year, we gave away approximately 200 one-pagers, which is about eight times more than at previous conferences. We also raffled off a Bassmaker — essentially a boom box built into a briefcase. The lucky winner was Julian Melo from IAMGOLD, and it is being shipped to his home in Sudbury. It should provide some great tunes on the dock this summer (apologies in advance to the neighbours).
More importantly, we were inundated with inquiries from groups dealing with projects where metal liberation remains a challenge. There was particularly strong interest in our new patent filing, Zero Tailings, following a presentation by our own Dr. Paul Miller to a group of approximately 20 representatives from some of the larger mining companies. Since then, we have signed a number of NDAs with parties interested in taking a closer look at the technology.
With that in mind, we are taking steps to ensure the story reaches a broader audience. Tomorrow, we will release a PR announcing that we have engaged Agoracom for a one-year term. Agoracom operates under a no-cash model, where shares (subject to a four-month hold period) are issued quarterly in lieu of cash. For a company at our stage, cash is king, so this is a practical way to increase visibility without putting additional strain on the treasury.
The reception we received at PDAC made one thing clear — our story has legs, but not enough people have heard it. Agoracom’s reach is significant, with over 900 million lifetime page views from more than 9 million investors, placing it in the top 0.15% of websites globally. It was founded by George Tsiolis in 1997, and I have known George for close to 30 years.
As you know, I recently visited Peru in search of tailings opportunities. While it is still early days, we are beginning to zero in on several opportunities that could be quite meaningful for BacTech. Securing tailings assets could significantly strengthen our balance sheet and may prove to be the key piece in unlocking the financing needed to move the Ecuador project ahead.
Of course, the elephant in the room remains Tenguel. Financing is never straightforward, particularly in today’s market, but we continue to work toward a structure that provides investors with both confidence and meaningful upside. Between the progress on financing, the growing interest in Zero Tailings, and the potential addition of assets in Peru, several important pieces appear to be moving into place.
With gold trading significantly higher interest in technologies that can unlock value from materials previously considered waste is increasing rapidly. The industry is slowly beginning to recognize that yesterday’s waste may, in fact, become tomorrow’s resource.
If PDAC taught us anything this year, it’s that the industry may finally be ready to take a serious look at what we’ve been talking about for years.
Cheers,
Ross Orr
President & CEO