West High Yield’s Barry Baim on Securing the Mining Permit for Record Ridge: Magnesium, Nickel, Silica & Iron

“It’s been a long and winding road,” says Barry Baim, Director and Corporate Secretary of West High Yield Resources Ltd. (TSXV: WHY), his voice carrying both relief and resolve. After nearly two decades of perseverance, the company has officially received its long-awaited mining permit from the British Columbia Ministry of Mines and Critical Minerals for the Record Ridge Industrial Mineral Mine near Rossland, BC. The authorization marks a turning point for a small-cap explorer now stepping into the realm of development. “We’re beyond an exploration company,” Baim says. “We’re moving into development, and we’re looking forward to hitting the ground potentially by the end of Q4 this year.”

The milestone was twenty-two years in the making and backed by more than $55 million in investment. “Eighteen years we’ve been working on this project,” Baim notes, emphasizing the sheer rarity of reaching such a stage. “The Ontario Mining Association says one in 10,000 projects get to the permit stage from prospecting through to exploration and drilling. That’s where we are.” For a team that has spent years navigating environmental reviews, technical studies, and regulatory hurdles, the announcement represents both vindication and validation. “We’re at the very upper end of the quadrant relative to perseverance and quality of resource,” he says.

Record Ridge hosts magnesium, silica, nickel, and iron — a mix of critical minerals central to the green-energy transition. The company’s focus is magnesium, but its multi-element deposit offers an unusual advantage: “The process to extract will take 94% of the critical minerals from the ore leaving only 6% waste,” Baim explains. “We’ve been working with Galaxy Magnesium, and they’re excited to get the ore as soon as possible.” Delivery, he adds, could begin “mid-next year.”

Unlike many green-field projects, Record Ridge requires no chemical processing onsite. “This is a very simple project,” Baim says. “It’s drill, blast, crush, and ship — so there’s little to no environmental footprint.” Located just 1.8 kilometers from a public highway and surrounded by existing gas and power infrastructure, the mine’s capital intensity remains relatively low. “Our cost to get this up and running relative to other projects is very low,” he says, adding that construction will be led by an Indigenous-partner contractor from the Osoyoos Indian Band, a First Nation with more than 30 years of mining experience.

West High Yield’s partnership with the Osoyoos Indian Band has become a model of collaboration. “We’ve been in consultation with First Nations since 2018,” Baim recounts. “The Osoyoos Indian Band is a very progressive and future-looking nation.” The company’s cooperation agreement evolved into a joint-venture partnership between the Band and a contractor group, forming Skemxist Solutions, an Indigenous-led mining and environmental services firm. “This provides not only revenue generation for the nation relative to economic reconciliation,” Baim says, “but it provides training, development, and allows them to expand their mining interests within their nation lands.” As the first fully permitted magnesium project in North America, Record Ridge carries symbolic weight. “It’s a milestone that de-risks our project,” Baim says. “It’s just not about mining minerals either — it’s about being responsible to the environment. We’re Indigenous-inclusive, and we de-risk a lot of our pathway.” For a junior mining company trading under the simple symbol WHY, the answer to that question — Why West High Yield? — may well lie in Baim’s quiet confidence: “We have a great project ahead.”

To access the complete interview, click here

Don’t miss other InvestorNews interviews. Subscribe to the InvestorNews YouTube channel by clicking here