BKB hits extensional holes to US silver resource with grades up to 1,333g/t silver

Our 2025 Small Cap Pick of the Year, Black Bear Minerals (ASX: BKB) just released drilling results from its high grade Silver Project in Texas, USA.

BKB’s project previously produced ~35.2 million ounces at an average 521g/t silver between 1883 and 1942.

The latest production run was in ~2012-2013 producing silver from existing infrastructure including processing plant, refinery, grid power and water rights with replacement cost of ~A$150M.

(when silver was only US$20 per ounce… now silver’s at ~US$60 per ounce)

The project currently has a 17.57Moz @ 289g/t silver foreign (non-JORC) resource.

BKB is in the middle of a drill program to extend that resource - which today’s extensional hits add some weight to.

Here is a cross section of where the extensional hits sit relative to BKB’s existing resource:

(source)

And here is a look at it on a 2D map (the yellow is the current foreign resource, the red is everywhere BKB has hit mineralisation outside of the resource):

(source)

We are Invested in BKB to see it convert that resource into JORC compliance (and hopefully see the number grow), before eventually putting it into a mine restart plan for the project.

BKB confirmed today that re-logging and re-sampling historic core (these check assays due in ~4-6 weeks), a low cost way to add data towards the JORC resource without re-drilling.

The reason we like BKB’s project is because it already has A$150M of existing on-site infrastructure, including:

• plant + refinery (built 2011-2012) A modern
• A 24,000 sq. ft. warehouse
• An assay lab
• Existing power lines + an on-site substation
• Full water rights
• 160km of existing underground workings
• Four production shafts

(source)

So whatever resource BKB is able to define should be able to be brought into production a lot quicker relative to other silver projects.

Hopefully at a much lower cost the infrastructure doesn’t need to be built from scratch AND BKB’s resource grade is 289g/t (which is very high for silver projects globally).

We covered some funding support BKB received recently here: Australian Government funding USA mining projects? All hands on deck for this urgent national security issue.

What we want to see next from BKB:

🔄 Silver project in Texas, USA

Over the next 6 months the main things we want to see are the following:

• 🔄 Rapid restart study (CAPEX estimate)
• 🔄 Drill program - 11 diamond holes
• 🔄 Multi-element gold/zinc/lead assays
• 🔲Maiden JORC resource
• 🔲 Scoping Study starts
• 🔲 Restart Final Investment Decision (FID)

🔄 Gold project in Nevada

We covered BKB’s 2.2M oz gold equivalent resource in our most recent note here: BKB also owns 100% of a 2.2M oz gold project in Nevada

On that that project we want to see the following over the next ~6-9 months:

• 🔄 Mining studies
• 🔄 Follow-up drilling on deeper targets
• 🔲 Metallurgical testwork across shallow resource
• 🔲 Scoping study (project economics)