Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Broken Hill Mines (ASX:BHM), Executive Chair Patrick Walta
Lel Smits: Broken Hill Mines is breathing new life into Australia’s iconic mining region, uniting two historic assets, the Rasp and Pinnacles Mines, to unlock their full potential. With a strong operational base, significant growth milestones achieved and a clear pathway to increased production, the company is positioning itself as a key player in silver, lead and zinc supply. Ahead of presenting at the Noosa Mining Conference in November, Executive Chair Patrick Walta joins me to discuss how Broken Hill Mines is leveraging experience, strategy and financing strength to deliver value from Australia’s silver capital.
Patrick, welcome to the Stock Network.
Patrick Walta: Thanks, Lel. Great to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, with the completion of a US$25 million off-take financing facility and concentrate agreement with Hartree Metals, how is Broken Hill Mines using this capital to accelerate development and also production at Rasp and Pinnacles?
Patrick Walta: Yeah, good question. It’s a big milestone for us to secure this financing and off-take agreement. And really what it does is it allows us to accelerate our plans around growth in Broken Hill.
So we currently own the Rasp Mine in the centre of town in Broken Hill, and we also have a 70-30 operational profit share over the Pinnacles Mine, which is about 15 kilometres out of town. And at the moment, we are only running one ore body, or as of a week or so ago, we’re only running one ore body, but we have access to two additional high-grade ore bodies. So running the Western Mineralisation at the moment, but we’ve just brought online, and today we just announced that mining and processing has started at the high-grade main load ore body.
And soon, into 2026, we’ll bring on the Pinnacles Mine as well. So this financing and this initiative is really allowing us to accelerate those plans and ultimately expand our production. And what’s really exciting about our production base is we’re significantly increasing the amount of silver we’re producing.
So we produce silver, lead and zinc, but these new ore bodies are very high-grade silver and all coming on at a time where silver’s approaching all-time highs of $50 an ounce.
Lel Smits: Absolutely. Now, the main load is a key ore body within the Raas Mine lease area.
Great to see that you now have main load online. What are your ramp-up plans?
Patrick Walta: Yeah, well, we’ve been working on bringing main load online for over 12 months now. So we’ve done 1,000 metres of underground development there, and that was completed a few weeks ago.
And it’s great now to be producing from main load. So our second ore body online, feeding into our Raas plant, our 750,000 tonne per annum plant at the Raas Mine as well. We’ll progressively see main load ramp up over the course of the rest of this financial year.
So as we bring on more ore development drives, we’ll be able to extract more ore. And as we said, it’s a beautiful high-grade ore body. It’s about two and a half times the grade of our existing Western mineralisation ore body as well.
So more tonnes and more metal coming into our plant.
Lel Smits: Patrick, thank you for the update from Broken Hill Mines, a transformative period for the company, and look forward to hearing more at the Noosa Mining Conference in November.
Patrick Walta: Thanks very much, Lel. Thank you.
Ends