Ross Beaty flipped the laptop around and pointed its camera to the sea.
“That’s a whale-watching boat,” the veteran mining entrepreneur said from Bowen Island near Vancouver. “There’s been a whole whack of humpback whales here yesterday and today.”
Beaty sounded excited, and why not? He’s got a history of drawing out big things from the deep.
Since 2017 as chairman, he’s built Equinox Gold (TSX: EQX; NYSE-AM: EQX) into a nearly 1-million-oz. annual producer with a C$3.5-billion market value. Its latest mine, Greenstone in Ontario, poured first gold in May and is ramping up to 400,000-oz. a year capacity.
That’s decades after Beaty sold one of his first companies, the similarly named Equinox Resources. Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL) bought it in 1994 for C$107 million. He immediately poured that into developing Pan American Silver (TSX: PAAS; NASDAQ: PAAS), which is now the world’s second-largest silver producer by stock market value, at C$11.3 billion. He stepped down as chairman in 2021.
Along the way there’s been his Lumina group of companies and sales like copper assets to majors including First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) and Franco-Nevada (TSX: FNV; NYSE: FNV). In 2008, he formed geothermal energy company Magma Energy, eventually bought by Innergex Renewable Energy in 2018 for US$1.1 billion. And there’s been a persistent shower of awards.
Trophies
They include the Association of Mineral Exploration of British Columbia’s Colin Spence Award in 2007 for excellence in global mineral exploration; the B.C. Mining Association’s Mining Person of 2008, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Viola MacMillan Award in 2010 for leadership in management and financing; The Northern Miner’s Mining Person of 2011, the Canadian Institute of Mining’s Past President Memorial Medal, the Order of Canada in 2017, the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2018.
Now he’s getting The Northern Miner’s Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented in London, England on Dec. 2. He’ll be just back from touring Equinox’s seven other mines: Aurizona, Fazenda, Santa Luz and RDM in Brazil, Castle Mountain and Mesquite in California and Los Filos in Mexico. That followed a bicycle trip around Italy in October and a bike relay from B.C. to formally open Greenstone in late August.
Travel for business or pleasure has always been one of Beaty’s loves. It’s also exposed him to gruelling challenges that derailed some plans.
During a B.Sc. in geology in B.C. he trekked across South America and South Africa. He followed a master’s at the Royal School of Mines in London with backpacking across Africa and the Middle East to Japan.
Argentina
“You’re young and carefree, took lots of risks, traveled hard, you know, the cheap way,” Beaty said. “I fell in love with Argentina on that trip. And then, when I started working there, my love relationship quickly turned to pure hate.”
