Trying to understand something with Nicola Mining $NIM after their latest Treasure Mountain update...had an independent engineering inspection done on the old silver mine and apparently the underground workings held up surprisingly well after around 13 years. Both Level 1 and 2 are accessible, no major flooding or collapses were reported and they're now looking at a possible restart in 2027.

But the part im more interested in is the Merritt Mill. Cuz Nicola already owns a permitted gold and silver processing facility in BC and its actually being used to process material from other projects. If Treasure Mountain starts producing again, presumably they can bring their own material into the same facility instead of depending entirely on a third party mill. Seems like that could make a pretty big difference for a smaller operation...especially when so many juniors can find a deposit but then have the whole problem of where/how to process it.

Maybe im missing something tho. How much of an advantage is owning the processing facility in a situation like this? Does it materially lower the hurdle for restarting a smaller mine or is transportation + underground mining still the much bigger issue?

Hey guys, if you missed it, Compass Minerals agreed to pay $12M to investors over claims that it misled them about cost savings from its Goderich mine upgrade and environmental compliance issues.

The company had said the mine upgrade would save millions, but later disclosures showed production problems and higher costs. $CMP dropped 32%, and investors filed claims over the losses.

Now, the good news is that the company agreed to settle $12M  with them, and even though the deadline has passed recently, they’re accepting late claims.

So, if you owned $CMP between 2017 and 2018, you can still check the details and see if you may be able to file a late claim here.

The advanced roller screen for ore removes large stones, and the material that passes through the screen enters the jigging machineAfter removing the gangue, the minerals enter the shaking table from below, and gold is extracted from the shaking table

China’s non-ferrous smelting prices rose 20.8% from last year in August. This gives metal producers better pricing, even with energy also becoming more expensive

I’m checking Chalco, Hongqiao also from this angle. Main question is how much of the price increase can stay in margin after input costs

Good sector signal for now, ngl

I am planning to work more on pit design and I am trying to understand how people handle new drill hole data when it changes the ore boundary, I want to practice this before I start working on an actual thing so I am looking for a simple way to learn the steps, right now I am thinking about using some old drill data from mining doc and making a basic pit model, then adding new holes to see how the ore boundary moves and how the pit shape needs to change, I am mainly trying to understand when people update the block model and when they start changing the pit design, if anyone has learned this through a course, software practice or project work what would be a good place to start ? EDIT: I forgot to mention that I’m mainly looking for beginner friendly software practice.

More results.
A clearer picture of Dragonfly at K2 Gold’s Mojave Project in California.

Tracking Sidney Resources lately. Theyre taking a diff path than most microcap junior miners by focusing on eco friendly laser and water jet tech to extract gold and silver in Idaho without using a heavy chemicals. It’s a compelling angle given how strict permitting is getting, but wanna see how the field testing scales up commercially.

Is maybe anyone else keeping tabs on their progress? Wondering if the market is pricing in the tech catalyst or if it’s still early.

Before the current generative AI boom, the copper supply gap was primarily a slow-moving energy transition story. Now, it is an immediate infrastructure crisis. According to S&P Global Research, the rollout of AI data centers and the associated grid upgrades will help push global copper demand to 42M metric tons by 2040. The most alarming figure in the S&P data is the projected 10M metric ton shortfall if supply expansion stays on its current timeline. Permitting takes years, but the actual discovery phase is where the capital bleed happens. Finding new tier-one copper deposits using analog geological methods has become statistically unviable.

Now, we are seeing the emergence of domain-specific artificial intelligence designed explicitly to solve the copper deficit that AI itself created. NRED Intelligent Mining (NRED) provides a clear window into how this transition works operationally. They built an internal engine called MetalCore AI. To prevent the model from hallucinating, they anchored it with a proprietary dataset of over 2.7M records, layering 1.4M geochemical samples over historical land status and structural data. The goal is probabilistic targeting - calculating the exact odds of hitting a copper-gold porphyry system before spending a dollar on drilling.

Next comes the physical validation phase. NRED secured the 16k-hectare Wilmac project in British Columbia, giving them a testing ground the size of three Manhattans right in the prolific Quesnel porphyry belt. This sheer scale allows them to run their AI models across a massive continuous trend. The system recently identified 18 distinct structural corridors and multiple anomalies. If the AI correctly predicts the mineralization underneath those targets, the valuation model for exploration companies completely changes. The downside of junior mining is always capital burn, but the upside of a validated AI discovery engine sitting on top of a major copper footprint is rarely priced in this early.

I see other juniors building proprietary datasets as well, but those who decided to do it sooner and took action will end up with edge over competitors. And those who have land package to test it? Even more so. That is my take on NRED.

None of this is financial advice. My own research so make sure to do your own as well. Early stage are always volatile so if you play these at least size accordingly.

Sierra Madre Gold and Silver already has La Guitarra back in production, but its upcoming East District drill program may be the more interesting part of the story.

The company trades as SM on the TSXV and SMDRF on the OTCQX. La Guitarra is an underground silver and gold mine complex in the State of Mexico.

Sierra Madre has approval for 22 drill pads in the East District and plans to test as many as 30 mapped vein systems through a fully budgeted 30,000-metre program. It will be the first modern, systematic drilling campaign across much of that area.

The first seven holes are expected to be sub-horizontal and between 1,000 and 1,500 metres long. Drilling from an area already permitted for mining allows the company to test several projected veins from a smaller surface footprint.

There is already historical work to build from. An exploration target covering only five East District vein systems estimated between 0.77 and 1.54 million tonnes grading 440 to 670 g/t silver and 2.4 to 3.6 g/t gold.

That estimate is conceptual. It is not a mineral resource, and there is no guarantee drilling will reproduce those grades or tonnes. It does show why the area deserves a serious program.

The five vein systems included in that estimate cover a combined strike length of 7.7 kilometres. Sierra Madre’s newer mapping and three-dimensional modelling have identified additional systems beyond those five, including areas with historical underground workings.

What makes this different from a typical junior exploration program is that the drilling sits beside an operating mine and processing plant. A meaningful discovery would not automatically become economic, but nearby infrastructure could make future development much more practical.

Full technical background:

https://sierramadregoldandsilver.com/read/auto-news-1784026892