Alexco hopes Bermingham will drive Keno Hill revival

KENO CITY, YUKON — Rolling into Alexco Resource’s (TSX: AXR; NYSE-MKT: AXU) Keno Hill silver camp outside of the long standing – though now sparsely populated – mining hamlet of Keno City in the central Yukon is a living lesson in history. The local museum houses industrial relics and antique equipment that tell the silent stories of a half-century of large scale silver production that ended in the late 1980s, while Alexco’s modern camp is juxtaposed by the fading remnants of the empty town of Elsa. Alexco’s goal since acquiring the land package in 2006 has been to revive the prolific district, and it hopes that a pair of discoveries will pave the way to sustainable production. The company took a brief run at restarting operations in 2011 when it began pulling ore from the Bellekeno silver mine, but by 2013 it had announced the “interim suspension of operations,” due to rising operating costs and falling silver prices. During a walk through Alexco’s quiet flotation mill, president and CEO Clynton Nauman says that the real upside for Keno Hill has always been exploration, and the company’s geological team has never stopped combing the 230 km² district for discoveries. In fact, Alexco nearly built its processing facility on top of its next potential source of mill feed, the Flame and Moth deposit, which the company found while shutting down operations three years ago. Read the entire story at The Northern Miner.