Intelligent. Impatient. Addicted to the game of creating wealth for others. Billionaire mining entrepreneur Ross Beaty has built one successful resource company after another. The Vancouver geologist formed Lumina Copper in the early 2000s to acquire and develop copper projects. Early investors there were rewarded with staggering returns of over 8000% (Full story).
Beaty created Pan American Silver, one of the world’s largest silver producers. He’s backed countless other successful mining startups including Ventana Gold and Augusta Resource Corp. in a big way. In 2009, Beaty turned his sights to renewable energy, and built Alterra Power into a successful producer that was acquired for $1.1 billion last year.
He’s been honored with the Order of Canada (2017), the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame (2018), the B.C. Business Laureates Hall of Fame (2017), and countless others for his entrepreneurship and philanthropy.
We recently caught up with Mr. Beaty to learn about his new gold business and hear his thoughts on the mining cycle.
Goldfinger: Welcome back to CEO.CA, Mr. Beaty. Lets begin today with your new venture. What should investors know about Equinox Gold (TSXV:EQX)?
Ross Beaty: I decided to build a gold mining company because I love gold for all kinds of reasons and I believe this is a good time in the cycle to build a large gold producer. This will probably be the deal that bookends my career and I intend to build Equinox quickly because I want to take advantage of the current weak market in gold mining shares. I’m an impatient person and I intend to accomplish this in a few years, not a decade.
Equinox has two flagship assets, the Aurizona Project in Brazil and the Castle Mountain Project in California. Aurizona is under construction right now and we plan to have our first gold pour before the end of the year; Aurizona will produce 137,000 ounces of gold per year at an all-in sustaining cost of US$754 per ounce. Castle Mountain is a bigger project with nearly 4 million ounces of gold in 2P reserves, and it will produce over 200,000 ounces of gold per year at an all-in sustaining cost of US$763 per ounce.
For the rest of this interview: https://ceo.ca/@goldfinger/gold-billionaire-ross-beatys-unfinished-business