When Allan Cramm and I were at Anaconda Mining, we operated a low grade open pit gold mine and processing facility at the Point Rousse Project in Newfoundland. Just down the road, on our property, was our holy grail to more grade and higher profitability – the Romeo and Juliet deposit. But it frustrated and eluded us for nearly 10 years. You may ask why? The problem was that regardless of the conventional mining method or the gold price environment, we could not find an economic scenario to mine this steeply dipping, narrow vein deposit that had potentially much higher ore grade than our open pit operation.

This problem is what led us down the path of what we originally called Sustainable Mining by Drilling. At first, our journey was focused on solving an internal issue. However, our course changed when we were a finalist at the Disrupt Mining innovation contest in 2019. Even though we did not come away the winner (but probably the fan favorite!), we got something far more valuable than the 1st place prize. We learned we were not alone! There were several hundred attendees in the audience and when mingling amongst the crowd after the contest, we encountered many people from across the world who shared similar stories as Romeo and Juliet and thought our technology could be useful at their site. That was our big “aha!” moment, which altered our destiny forever. Now, we’re on a mission to bring a new mining technology and process to market and help mining companies turn uneconomic narrow vein mineral resources into profitable, mineable deposits.

~ Dustin Angelo
President, CEO, and Co-Founder