Itronics Positioned to Benefit From Historic High and Rising Gold Prices - Seite 2

1. Printed Circuit Board Refining: Itronics plans to restart pilot scale circuit board refining operations during 2024, capitalizing on the rising gold and silver prices that are expected to boost the economics of the refining operation. 

Itronics has a technological advantage in printed circuit board refining due to its ability to recover the tin used in the solder on the boards.  The tin is worth almost as much as the copper.  The Company also has a geographic advantage being based in Reno, Nevada, in the western United States.  California has historically been a major source of this scrap, but with all the new factories being built, Arizona is becoming more important as well. Since most printed circuit board scrap is exported to Europe and Japan for recovery by copper smelters, Itronics’ location in western Nevada is a much shorter shipping distance. Transportation cost savings, shorter transit time, and more rapid turnaround on processing provide important financial savings on a large scale.

The timing for restarting and expanding this operation is opportunistic due to the historic increases in the price of gold, combined with the forecasted increases in silver prices for 2024 and beyond.  These price increases will improve the economics of our refining operations.  The Company plans to form a refining subsidiary and license related Intellectual Property and assets to the new subsidiary.

2. Itronics’ Leaching Technologies for zinc, iron, and manganese recovery from flue dusts and battery black mass produce an unexpected, and exciting outcome. Removal of the major metal components from these materials, which often contain small amounts of gold and silver, concentrates the gold and silver in the leach residues. These leach residues can be processed by becoming an ingredient in the circuit board refining chemistry, which helps achieve the nearly complete recovery of gold and silver from the circuit boards. This is an Itronics technology advantage that provides a measurable economic benefit and increases the significance of rising gold and silver prices.

Around the world, zinc smelting residues are produced that are very high in iron content with measurable zinc and often measurable gold and silver that may be amenable to metal recovery using Itronics’ leaching technologies. Some of these residues are stored in tailings ponds. Itronics plans to test these zinc smelting residues in the future due to the metal values involved. The likelihood of success is high because of how the Itronics leaching chemistry works.  The gold and silver values in these materials can be quite high. A major advantage is the potential ability to process the gold and silver-rich leach residues using the printed circuit board refining technology, ensuring nearly complete recovery of these metals. Increasing gold and silver prices enhance recovery economics, making it more likely that this technology can be commercially developed to serve this specialized market.