Hecla Mining produced a company record amount of silver in the third quarter, the Northern Miner reported, with the Greens Creek mine on Alaska’s Admiralty Island again doing the heavy lifting. Greens Creek is one of the world’s largest primary silver mines and Hecla’s cornerstone asset, producing silver with significant zinc, lead and gold byproducts.
The timing is the point. Silver settled at 57.99 dollars an ounce in the site tables, up 2.04 percent on the session even after a 4.41 percent weekly fall, and the silver miners basket rose 3.48 percent. For a producer with Hecla’s cost base, quarters like this one are when the balance sheet is rebuilt.
Hecla’s other mines, Lucky Friday in Idaho and Casa Berardi in Quebec among them, contribute gold and base metals, but the equity story remains a silver story. The production release sets up the company’s third quarter financial results, where the realised price and all in sustaining cost lines will show how much of the record quarter reached the bottom line.