Silver on the Brink of “Going Ballistic”, Claims Nord Precious Metals’ Frank Basa

Silver, Frank Basa contends, is on the brink of “going ballistic,” and the veteran miner is positioning Nord Precious Metals Mining Inc. (TSXV: NTH | OTCQB: CCWOF) to catch the blast.Basa’s company operates the only permitted high-grade silver mill in Ontario’s storied Cobalt Camp, a 63-square-kilometer domain where drill results at the Castle East discovery have already outlined 7.56 million inferred ounces averaging 8,582 g/t silver. “Even Teck used to haul their rock to this plant,” Basa recalled, noting that Agnico mined 1.6 million ounces here decades ago and that the reborn facility can treat up to 3 million ounces annually.The grades, he insists, still defy modern laboratory standards. “We hit 89,000 grams a tonne—silver only,” he said of the “discovery holes” that convinced him to buy the past-producing Castle Mine a dozen years ago. A 60,000-meter drill campaign is now being re-assayed because, as Basa put it, “of the 100,000 samples, the labs couldn’t get it right—there are no standards that high.” Even without those new holes, Nord tallies roughly 250 ounces per ton in its current resource.Yet silver, in Basa’s telling, is only the opening act. The Castle rocks also host cobalt, nickel and—far from being a liability—arsenic, which Washington unexpectedly classified as a critical mineral. “Nobody’s producing it anymore,” he said. “What used to be waste is now in demand for chip substrates and, we discovered, even lithium-ion batteries.” To unlock that value, Nord spent $8 million developing Re-2Ox, a low-tech-high-sophistication hydrometallurgical circuit that has already produced cobalt sulphate “on spec for Sumitomo.” With federal and provincial coffers lining up behind industry partners, SGS is building a Re-2Ox pilot plant that will process a tonne a day before scaling to commercial throughput.A fresh trove of feedstock has just come to light. In early July, Nord’s crews completed their 68th test pit near the Castle headframe and found tailings in every hole. One trench, four meters deep and “still open,” underscores what Basa calls “new tailings discovery.” The company’s fenced compound—earmarked for a Falcon gravity concentrator and spiral circuit—sits atop the material, raising the prospect of immediate silver recovery and critical-metal extraction. “Every test pit tells a story of untapped value,” Basa said after the news release confirmed that tailings grades in earlier lab work reached 786,809 g/t in gravity concentrates.Basa keeps one eye on macroeconomics. The gold-to-silver ratio hovering near 100:1 is, he said, “something I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” and he expects a short squeeze as primary silver supply stagnates. “I don’t see gold coming down—some talk of $4,000 an ounce—so sooner or later silver will be really explosive.”Arsenic’s renaissance rounds out the thesis. “In the old days it was a penalty element,” he shrugged, “but now the Americans want it, and we might be the only hydromet plant globally that can handle this high-arsenic feed.” With three battery factories rising in Ontario—including Volkswagen’s first in Canada—Nord aims to become the camp’s twenty-first-century hub, pulling 300 tons a shift from underground veins that once ran “32 to 80 ounces a ton,” shipping gravity concentrates to Re-2Ox, and marketing both silver and critical metals to hungry supply chains.