Bunker Hill Mining Corp. announced that project restart activities have accelerated in early 2024 with early stage construction activities about to commence in support of new purpose built Process and Filtration Plant buildings. Early in 2024 Bunker Hill contracted Barnhart Crane & Rigging, who had previously helped the company successfully and safely dismantle and transport the Pend Oreille mill from Metaline Falls, WA to Kellogg, ID, to perform a similar role with critical components purchased from the Golden Sunlight mine. Most conspicuous among these components was a Rod Mill that will be repurposed as the primary Ball Mill in the new Process Plant to potentially enable the 1800tpd operational milling throughput with significant upside capacity (cf. Bunker Hill 2.0). With these parts now on site, as well as the full suite of Pend Oreille Mill equipment, procurement of equipment for the new Process Plant was at 81% as at 22 February 2024. After the connection of the Wardner base of mining operations to the overland power grid in late 2024, on 21 February, 2024 the Bunker Hill mining team safely dropped power underground as part of the first stage of connecting the highest levels of the mine (those that will be mined in the first three years after restart) to mainline electrical power. In the coming weeks this power will be used to start the main 7ft ventilaton fan that has already been procured and is ready to go, and to power the first fully automated mine doors ever to be installed in the Bunker Hill mine. Iterative power drops will continue throughout the year to ensure all parts of the mine between Levels 5 and 9 that are integral to the mine plan will be ready to support the full suite of mining activities on restart. In addition to these activities a drilling contact with Dynamic Drilling Inc. was recently executed in support of a drill program that will commence in April 2024 and last for much of the year in support of both resource definition and resource expansion. DRILLING OF DEEP PIERS: On 4 March 2024 LFI from Kansas will deploy rigs onto the main Kellogg site to commence the drilling of auger-cast piles. This is a pre-foundation, preparation of the land activity with drilling due to commence on the west side of the yard before advancing to the east side. In preparation for this work the building previously used by team members as an office building, a pre-war building dating from the early 20th century, is in the process of being demolished (with a period of abatement preceding actual demolition). Whilst not formally classified as construction activities, this drill program will nevertheless mark the start of a
transition out of an extensive engineering and design phase and into physical activity on the ground. The pre-foundational design work for this has been a collaborative effort by Barr Engineering Company (the group that has been designing the Process Plant) and LFI, a company that specializes in auger-cast piles.