Giant Bay president vows to promote bioleaching

Under newly-appointed president and director Claus Jensen, Giant Bay Resources has started a campaign to, in Mr. Jensen’s words, “promote bioleaching like hell.”

Mr Jensen appeared before a group of about 50 stock brokers, investment analysts and portfolio managers at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto early this month. (By contrast, a similar meeting held just last year in Toronto attracted only six people). He was appointed president July 31 after Ross O. Glanville resigned his positions to pursue consulting assignments.

Mr Jensen, who describes himself as a prudent risk-taker, said Giant Bay will be seeking a broader market for its shares in the U.S. now that it has proven the technological feasibility of biologically leaching refractory ores containing sulphides of iron, arsenic and antimony. The leaching can be done in tanks or in heaps.

The company has applied for a nasdaq listing and will be doing a number of “show-and-tell” sessions to introduce the company and its technology to Wall Street in New York this month. Giant Bay currently has 172 registered shareholders, trading some 6.7 million outstanding shares, almost exclusively in Toronto.

“Within a month we expect to make a deal with a major mining company,” he said, “but the major market for our technology will be with new mines coming on.” Commercialization

Giant Bay fully intends to use the bioleaching technology it has developed at the laboratory scale to become a major gold producer. “We will not sell our technology,” Mr. Jensen says bluntly, “But we will use it as leverage to acquire interests in mines coming on stream.” He predicted that Giant Bay will sign deals for two or three heap leaching gold operations within the next year and a half.

For every 500,000-ton-per-year operation Giant Bay participates in, an estimated $2.60 would be added to the value of its shares, according to the company. About 27 cents a share would be added for every 100-ton- per-day mill the company participates in.

There are several mining companies which, until now, have been stockpiling refractory ores. American Barrick Resources Corp., for example, has an estimated 5 million tons stockpiled at its Mercur mine near Salt Lake City, Utah. Australia would be an even bigger market for the bioleaching technology.

Last spring the company announced plans to build a plant that will likely demonstrate the commercial feasibility of using Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, a common bicrobe, to oxidize sulphides which contain valuable metals such as gold. Based on pilot plant tests the company estimates a 100-ton-per- day plant would cost $5.1 million and cost $58 a ton to operate. No site has been selected as yet for the plant.

The company is now working on selecting a strain of bacteria to treat carbonaceous ores which have proven to be difficult to treat in conventional gold mills.