3 More Mining Companies to Watch: Beaver Creek Interviews
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| By Sean Brodrick |
Recently, I showed you three interviews I did with up-and-coming miners.
I recorded those interviews at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit, a showcase of underappreciated and undiscovered mining companies.
In fact, I interviewed MORE great companies at Beaver Creek. Today, I have three more interviews for you.
To be clear, these are not recommendations; they are profiles to put three promising names on your radar.
Gunnison Copper: Arizona’s Next Big Copper Story
Gunnison Copper (TSX: GCU; OTCQB: GCUMF) is an emerging U.S. copper producer with an unusually straightforward pitch.
It controls an entire copper district in southern Arizona; it is already producing copper, and its much larger flagship project could eventually turn it into a significant domestic supplier.
I talked to Melissa Mackie, VP of Investor Relations for Gunnison.
Here, she gives you the scoop …
One thing I’d like to add: Gunnison is working toward a NYSE American listing under the proposed ticker GUNN.
It should start trading under that symbol on or about Oct. 26!
That should substantially improve its visibility and liquidity among U.S. investors.
An important wrinkle: GUNN will be an ADR, not the company's ordinary shares.
The plan is that one GUNN ADR will represent 35 Gunnison common shares.
The Canadian shares will continue trading on the TSX as GCU.
But enough stock listing talk. Let’s talk more about the company.
Gunnison controls the Cochise Mining District, with 12 known deposits within an eight-kilometer economic radius.
Its two key assets are the producing Johnson Camp Mine and the much larger Gunnison Copper Project, which incorporates the nearby Strong & Harris deposit.
Johnson Camp is the operation that has moved Gunnison from developer to producer.
Copper production restarted in August 2025, with the first copper from Rio Tinto's Nuton bioleaching technology following in December.
Hold up — what’s bioleaching?
That’s when miners use microorganisms to help extract copper from rock — particularly sulfide ores that historically haven't responded well to ordinary heap leaching.
The microbes cut out many expensive processes you normally have to put sulfide ores through.
The final product is 99.99% pure copper cathode.
Rio Tinto spent more than 30 years developing the technology before producing its first Nuton copper at Johnson Camp in late 2025.
The demonstration is targeting roughly 30,000 metric tons — about 66 million pounds — of refined copper over four years.
The mine reached commercial production in September 2026 after producing a record 1.30 million pounds of copper cathode in August and another 895,000 pounds through Sept. 17.
Its SX/EW plant has a nameplate capacity of 25 million pounds of finished copper cathode annually, and Gunnison is ramping toward that rate.
The company has not published formal full-year 2026 production guidance. So keep that in mind. This is part of why the stock is so cheap (for now).
In Q2 2026, Gunnison produced 2.01 million pounds of copper cathode and generated $23.6 million in revenue, including $13.7 million from copper sales.
Net income was $13.1 million, or $0.03 per share, versus a $2.9 million loss a year earlier.
First-half production totaled 4.11 million pounds.
Gunnison has not yet reported an AISC for Johnson Camp while the operation has been ramping up.
That’s another reason the stock trades at a discount.
However, the 2026 PEA for the flagship Gunnison Project estimates cash costs of $1.69 per pound and AISC of $2.06 per pound.
The flagship Gunnison Project contains more than 5.1 billion pounds of copper in Measured and Indicated resources.
Nearby Strong & Harris contains another roughly 740 million pounds in the Inferred category.
The 2026 PEA envisions a conventional open-pit, heap-leach and SX/EW operation producing an average of 174 million pounds of copper cathode annually during its first 15 years and approximately 3.2 billion pounds over a 21-year mine life.
At $4.60 per pound of copper, the study estimates a $1.95 billion after-tax NPV, 22.7% IRR and a 3.9-year payback.
A final prefeasibility study and the key permit amendments are targeted for the first half of 2028, potentially positioning the company for a construction decision on the Gunnison Project after that.
Another factor weighing on the stock is the transition from experimental to commercial.
Rio Tinto's Nuton fully funded the Johnson Camp restart and is using the mine for the first industrial-scale deployment of its sulfide bioleaching technology.
In September, the partners expanded the Stage 2 mine plan by about 3 million tons of mineralized material to be mined from 2027 through 2029, with Nuton agreeing to make an additional $8 million payment to Gunnison.
After Stage 2, Nuton can pursue a joint venture with an initial 49% interest.
Something else that caught my eye …
Amazon Web Services is the first customer for Nuton copper from Johnson Camp. It will use the copper in U.S. data center infrastructure.
The risk to all this is that Gunnison remains a relatively small company facing the financing and execution risks of developing a roughly $1.5 billion flagship mine.
Also, the Gunnison PEA is still preliminary.
Finally, Johnson Camp also lacks established mineral reserves, adding uncertainty around long-term recoveries, costs and production.
But if Gunnison can successfully leap from Johnson Camp's 25-million-pound capacity to Gunnison's planned 174-million-pound annual output, it becomes a very different company.
Contango: Cash Flow Today, a Mining Empire Tomorrow
I’ve talked to Contango Silver & Gold (NYSE American: CTGO; TSX: CTGO), formerly Contango ORE, multiple times.
At Beaver Creek, I got the latest from Mike Clark, Contango's Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer.
Contango is a rapidly growing precious-metals producer with four major assets: the producing Manh Choh gold mine in Alaska, Lucky Shot in Alaska, the Johnson Tract project in Alaska and the Kitsault Valley silver-gold project in British Columbia.
Manh Choh is the cash-flow engine.
Contango owns 30% of the Peak Gold joint venture, with Kinross Gold owning 70% and operating the mine.
Instead of building its own processing plant, Manh Choh trucks ore roughly 250 miles to Kinross' existing Fort Knox mill.
Contango expects its share of 2026 production to total 40,000 to 45,000 ounces of gold.
More importantly, production is poised to jump sharply as mining moves into higher-grade portions of the South Pit.
Management is already guiding for 75,000 to 80,000 ounces in 2027, with cash costs of $1,200 to $1,300 per ounce and AISC of $1,300 to $1,400.
The latest quarter shows both the opportunity and the growing pains.
In Q2, Contango's 30% share of Manh Choh produced 8,885 ounces of gold and sold 8,627 ounces, plus 10,319 ounces of silver.
Gold and silver sales totaled $37.5 million, while the company received a $9 million cash distribution from the joint venture.
Contango reported net income of $4.8 million and ended June with $89 million in unrestricted cash.
Costs were temporarily ugly: Q2 cash costs were $2,641 per ounce, and AISC was $2,877.
Management expects costs to fall sharply as higher-grade ore from South Pit boosts production.
That’s why 2027 AISC guidance is lower.
The growth story goes well beyond Manh Choh.
At the high-grade Lucky Shot gold project, Contango is conducting underground and surface drilling while working toward a feasibility study in the first half of 2027.
A positive study could lead to a production decision later that year, with Lucky Shot targeted to produce 40,000 to 50,000 ounces of gold annually using the same DSO concept.
Meanwhile, at Johnson Tract, Contango is building access to another extremely high-grade polymetallic deposit, with an exploration tunnel targeted for construction in 2027.
Johnson Tract was approved for the federal FAST-41 permitting program, potentially helping move permitting along more efficiently.
A Transformational Deal
Contango merged with Dolly Varden Silver in 2026, adding the large Kitsault Valley project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
That gave Contango major exposure to silver as well as gold and created another substantial development pipeline.
The company has been conducting an aggressive drilling campaign there and plans to use an updated resource estimate as the foundation for an initial assessment in 2027.
Contango also bought out the Lucky Shot lease and 2% NSR royalty, giving it 100% ownership of that project.
Put together, management sees a path from roughly 60,000 gold-equivalent ounces of current annual production to more than 200,000 ounces of gold plus 5 million ounces of silver per year as its projects come online.
Another big positive: Contango says its original $105 million investment in Manh Choh has already generated $160 million in returns, meaning its initial investment has been fully repaid.
The company has also eliminated its gold hedges, giving it full exposure to higher gold prices.
So what should we worry about?
Current Manh Choh costs are high, and much of Contango's projected growth depends on projects that aren't producing yet.
Lucky Shot, Johnson Tract and Kitsault Valley still face permitting, engineering, financing and execution risks.
But if management can execute, Contango has something many junior miners don't: a producing asset generating cash today to help finance a much larger production profile tomorrow.
Goliath Resources: Visible Gold, 100% Hit Rate & It’s Still Growing
Goliath Resources (TSX-V: GOT; OTCQX: GOTRF) is a Canadian exploration company focused on a large, high-grade gold discovery in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
CEO Roger Rosmus was excited to share the company’s story …
Goliath’s flagship Golddigger property sits southeast of Stewart, B.C., close to tidewater and within two kilometers of the region's important "Red Line" geological trend.
The centerpiece is the Surebet discovery, a gold-rich system that was largely hidden beneath glaciers and permanent snowpack until relatively recently.
Goliath acquired 100% ownership of Golddigger in March 2026 and simultaneously reduced the property's net-smelter-return royalty from 3% to 2%.
Importantly, Surebet doesn't even have a formal mineral resource estimate yet.
This is a discovery-stage company whose value depends on proving that the gold system it has found is both enormous and eventually economic to mine.
So far, however, the drill results are giving investors plenty to work with.
Every hole the company drills hits gold! And it has plenty of visible gold, too.
Surebet has developed a system of stacked gold-rich veins and intrusive dykes across five principal zones — Surebet, Bonanza, Golden Gate, Whopper and Eldorado.
By September 2026, Goliath had expanded the known high-grade footprint to 2.01 square kilometers.
More impressive, the company completed 48,443 meters in 97 holes during its 2026 campaign in just 94 days, with every hole hitting mineralization.
Combined with previous drilling, Goliath has now drilled more than 150,000 meters into the system.
The company says the mineralized zones remain open laterally and at depth, so it’s unclear how big they are.
And some of the grades are eye-catching. Previous drilling has returned intervals including 34.52 grams per tonne gold-equivalent (g/t AuEq) over 39 meters at Golden Gate and 21.08 g/t AuEq over 23 meters at Surebet.
During the 2026 program, Goliath continued hitting high-grade mineralization, including 19.51 g/t AuEq over 8.32 meters within a broader 35.7-meter interval grading 7.38 g/t AuEq.
More recently, drilling returned 9.89 g/t AuEq over 12 meters at Surebet while also identifying a new, much broader lower-grade “Big Bulk” zone.
That combination raises an intriguing possibility: Goliath may have both high-grade underground-style mineralization and larger bulk-tonnage mineralization within the same enormous system.
Meanwhile, metallurgy looks encouraging.
Testing has achieved 92.2% gold recovery using gravity plus flotation, including 48.8% recovery of free gold through gravity alone.
Goliath has deep-pocketed friends.
Its shareholder roster includes some well-known mining investors, including Crescat Capital, Waratah Capital Advisors, McEwen Inc., Rob McEwen and Eric Sprott.
The next major milestone is obvious: turn all those spectacular drill holes into a resource.
Goliath says its drilling and geological work are building toward a future maiden mineral resource estimate.
And that may be holding the stock back.
Without a resource estimate, feasibility study or economic assessment, nobody yet knows how many economically recoverable ounces Surebet contains, what a mine would cost or when production might begin.
But that's also what makes the stock interesting: Surebet is still in the discovery phase, yet drilling has already outlined a high-grade gold system covering roughly two square kilometers — and Goliath still hasn't found the edges.
Three companies. Three different stages of development. And three potential ways to benefit from growing demand for copper, silver and gold.
None are official recommendations today, but they're certainly worth keeping on your radar.
All the best,
Sean
