Mining Insights: three precious metals miners

Demand for precious metals has gone through the roof, so we headed to Cape Town and the largest mining investment event in Africa. At the Mining Indaba 2026, we spoke to a trio of interesting companies in the precious metals space each looking forward to an exciting year ahead.

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Chris Eger, CEO, Resolute Mining:Resolute Mining Ltd (LSE:RSG) today is a $2 billion market cap business with the first five assets in West Africa. So, we have both producing and exploring assets in four countries. So, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and Guinea.

Last year we generated 277,000 ounces of gold production EBITDA of over $383 million. However, we have a very strong pipeline of growth whereby we’re on track to produce over 500,000 ounces from 2028. This is going to generate a lot of cash in today’s gold price environment.

And, look, we’re being very active in managing relationships with the governments where we operate. So, we believe from an investment perspective that we’re still relatively undervalued because of the assets that we have within our portfolio and the cash flow generation of the business.

We sit today on over 16 million ounces of resource. As we look to the future, we think we can provide substantial shareholder returns and value through NAV accretion and cash flow generation.

Today, we have two very established operating lines, one in Mali and one in Senegal. Last year we bought a business in Cote d’Ivoire called Doropo, which is just starting its construction phase at this stage. That asset will produce over 200,000 ounces in the first year of production. So, the most exciting aspects for the business will be in the next 12 months, continued construction of that asset into production.

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Oliver Turner, president, corporate development, Americas Gold and Silver: We’re an American-focused, growing silver producer with assets in the Silver Valley in Idaho. We’ve previously taken over and scaled multiple companies before. The team is led by Paul Huet, myself, Warren Varga and Mike Doolin.

We previously built and scaled a company called Klondex Mines in Nevada, and then we did the same thing in Australia with a company called Karora Resources. This is our third time repeating the same strategy here at Americas Gold And Silver Corp (AMEX:USAS).  As I said, our primary asset is called Galena in the Silver Valley in Idaho where mining’s been going on for well over 100 years, same thing at Galena as well.

A very, very large scale silver mine that has extensive infrastructure. We’ve got two mills, four shafts heading underground, 120 miles of underground development. For context, to put that in place today would take about $2 billion to put that infrastructure in place.

So, we are operating and over the course of the last 14 months since we’ve been at the helm of the company, we’ve been executing an operational turnaround focused on hoisting, on efficiencies underground, getting new equipment, and new leadership there to turn around the operation, which has been very, very successful. We just reported a very strong production number for 2025, including very high grades. In fact, Galena is the third-highest grade silver mine in the world, which is fantastic.

But silver is not the only metal that we produce there. We also produce copper, we produce antimony, we produce lead, and we produce gold. So, all sorts of different critical minerals come out of the Galena mine in Idaho.

We also have a second mine down in Mexico called Cosala, which is run by a very experienced group down there. It’s a high-grade silver copper mine that also has a very strong production profile ahead of it.

Both these operations are being driven forward over the course of the next several years here with a strong growing profile.

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Segun Lawson, CEO, Thor Explorations:Thor Explorations Ltd Ordinary Shares (LSE:THX) is a West Africa-focused gold producer. We produce gold from our flagship 100% owned Segilola Gold Mine in Nigeria. We are now in our fifth calendar year of production. Last year was an excellent year for us. We produced 92,000 ounces, around about $1,000 per ounce.

This year, we’ve given a guidance of 75,000 to 85,000 ounces for the year at an all and sustaining cost guidance between $1,000 and $1,200 per ounce. And we use that cash flow to fund our activities across West Africa where we are present in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. In Senegal, we’ve just released our preliminary feasibility study on the Douta project. We’ve been advancing that over the last 12 years, the Douta project.

We’ve taken it from a complete grassroots, greenfield, bit of ground, drilled the first discovery hole there and now we’re sitting at about 1.7 million ounces and indicated with a reserve of a million ounces grading at about a gram per tonne.

We very encouraged by the outcome of that preliminary feasibility study, showed a very strong project NPV of about $900 million at a $3,500 gold price and a very fast payback period. We’re excited to be advancing, optimising that preliminary feasibility study and that’s a project we’re looking forward to building and, hopefully, pouring our first gold in the first half of 2028.

And finally in Côte d’Ivoire, we have an early stage portfolio of exploration licences. We’re currently drilling two of the projects, the Guitry project, and the Marahui project. We have over 20,000 metres of drilling budgeted prior to the rainy season in Côte d’Ivoire.

I think in the next six to 12 months we’re prioritising exploration across the group. It’s underpinned by high-margin gold production in Nigeria. So, the milestones to look out for is  a resource update from our mine in Nigeria, a final investment decision for our project in Senegal, and ongoing drilling results from all our projects particularly in Côte d’Ivoire, and hopefully a maiden resource or two in Côte d’Ivoire before the end of the year.