Banyan Announces $4.3 M Financing, Begins Phase 2 AurMac Exploration Program

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 8, 2020 / Banyan Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "Banyan") (TSX-V:BYN) is pleased to announce a private placement financing of up to $4.3M. Alexco Resource Corporation, Victoria Gold Corporation and Osisko Gold Royalties indicate they will participate pro rata along with other strategic and current shareholders. This will allow the Company to advance a Phase 2 Exploration Program at AurMac. Phase 2 exploration will include additional diamond drilling, geotechnical drilling, metallurgical test work, environmental baseline data collection and community consultation. Further details of the expanded program will be released in the coming weeks.

The Company proposes to raise up to $4.3 M with a combination of up to 12,500,000 Charity Flow Through Shares at $0.28, up to 2,000,000 Regular Flow Through Shares at $0.25 and 1,500,000 regular shares at $0.20 (together the "Offering"). The financing is expected to close on or before July 28, 2020 and the shares issued will be subject to the customary hold period. There will be no warrants issued with the Offering.

"Our current significant shareholders and new strategic shareholders participating in this financing are a strong endorsement of the growth potential of AurMac and confidence in our team." stated Tara Christie, President and CEO. "With a strong treasury, we are now well positioned to advance this project to the next level through 2020 and 2021. Banyan is taking this opportunity in finance at a time when there is strong interest in road accessible, near surface gold projects in an enviable jurisdiction, adjacent to two operating mines."

The flow through gross proceeds component received from the sale of the Shares will be used to incur "Canadian exploration expenses" as defined in subsection 66.1(6) of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Tax Act") on the Company's properties in the Yukon Territory, and renounced to subscribers in the Offering effective December 31, 2020. Such Canadian exploration expenses will also qualify as "flow-through mining expenditures" as defined in subsection 127(9) of the Tax Act. There may be fees up to 6% on a portion of this financing.

Closing of the Offering is expected to occur on or about the week of July 28, 2020, and is subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, including receipt of all applicable regulatory approvals including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV").

The Company is also please to announced that it has received Yukon Government Mineral Exploration Grants totalling $80,000 for exploration in 2020. Banyan commends the Yukon Government for their additional investment in the exploration industry to assist with the recovery of the Yukon economy.

In a May 25, 2020 News Release Banyan Gold announced an Initial Mineral Resource Estimate prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") guidelines for the AurMac Property of 903,945 ‎ounces of gold. It is a near surface, road accessible pit constrained Mineral Resource contained in two near/on-surface deposits: The Airstrip and Powerline deposits. The Mineral Resource is summarized below:

Table 1: Pit-Constrained Inferred Mineral Resources at a 0.2 g/t Au Cut-Off - AurMac Property

Notes to Table 1: ‎

1. The effective date for the Mineral Resource is May 25, 2020.
2. Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimate of Mineral Resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing, changes in global gold markets or other relevant issues.
3. The CIM definitions were followed for classification of Mineral Resources. The quantity and grade of reported inferred Mineral Resources in this estimation are uncertain in nature ‎and there has been insufficient exploration to define these inferred Mineral Resources as an ‎indicated Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in upgrading them to an ‎indicated or measured Mineral Resource category.
4. Mineral Resources are reported at a cut-off grade of 0.2 g/t Au, using a US$/CAN$ exchange rate of 0.75 and constrained within an open pit shell optimized with the Lerchs-Grossman algorithm to constrain the Mineral Resources with the following estimated parameters: gold price of US$1,500/ounce, US$1.50/t mining cost, US$2.00/t processing cost, US$2.50/t G+A, 80% heap leach recoveries, and 45° pit slope[1]
5. Mineral Resource Estimate prepared in accordance with 43-101 guidelines by Marc Jutras, P.Eng., M.A.Sc., Principal, Ginto Consulting Inc, with technical report filed July 7,2020.

Qualified Persons

Paul D. Gray, P.Geo., Vice President of Exploration for the Company, is a "qualified person" as ‎defined under NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the content of this news release.‎

COVID-19 Update

Banyan has taken proactive measures to protect the health and safety of our employees and communities from COVID 19 and exploration activities in 2020 will have additional safety measures in place, following and exceeding all the recommendations made by the Yukon's Chief Medical Officer.

There have been 11 COVID-19 cases confirmed in Yukon to date, with all patients having fully recovered. No cases have required hospitalization.

About Banyan

Banyan is focused on gold exploration projects that have the geological potential, size of land package and proximity to infrastructure that is advantageous for a mineral project to have potential to become a mine. Our Yukon based projects both fit this model and our objective is to gain shareholder value by advancing projects in our pipeline.

The Hyland Gold Project, located 70km NE of Watson Lake, Yukon, along the southeast end of the Tintina Gold Belt is a sediment hosted, structurally controlled, intrusion related gold deposit, with a large land package (over 125 sq. km), with the resource contained in the Main Zone area (900x600m) daylighting at surface and numerous other known surface gold targets. The Main Zone oxide zone is amenable to heap leach open pit mining, with column leach recoveries of 86%. The project has an existing gravel access road.

The Hyland Main Zone Indicated Gold Resource Estimate, prepared in accordance with NI 43-101, at a 0.3 g/t gold equivalent cutoff, contains 8.6 million tonnes grading 0.85 g/t AuEq for 236,000 AuEq ounces with an Inferred Mineral Resource of 10.8 million tonnes grading 0.83 g/t AuEq for 288,000 AuEq ounces. NI 43-101 prepared by Robert Carne, Allan Armitage and Paul Gray on May 1, 2018.

(1) Mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. All figures are rounded to reflect the relative accuracy of the estimate.

(2) Mineral resources are reported at a cut-off grade of 0.3 g/t AuEq. AuEq grade is based on $1,350.00/oz Au, $17.00/oz Ag and assumes a 100% recovery. The AuEq calculation does not apply any adjustment factors for difference in metallurgical recoveries of gold and silver. This information can only be derived from definitive metallurgical testing which has yet to be completed.

The 9,230 ha AurMac Property lies 30km from Victoria Gold's Eagle Project and adjacent to Alexco 's Keno Hill Silver District and is highly prospective for structurally controlled, intrusion related gold-silver mineralization in relation to the Tombstone intrusive suite. The property hosts numerous known gold targets and Banyan has developed a mineralization model at the McQuesten "Airstrip" and "Powerline" Gold deposits, located adjacent to the main Yukon highway and just off the main access road to the Victoria Gold open-pit, heap leach Eagle Gold mine. The AurMac Property benefits from a 3-phase powerline, existing Yukon Energy Corp. switching power station and cell phone coverage. Banyan has optioned the properties from Victoria Gold and Alexco respectively with a right to earn up to a 100% subject to royalties.

Banyan trades on the TSX-Venture Exchange under the symbol "BYN". For more information, please visit the corporate website at www.BanyanGold.com or contact the Company.

ON BEHALF OF BANYAN GOLD CORPORATION

(signed) "Tara Christie"
Tara Christie
President & CEO

For more information, please contact:
Tara Christie
Tel: (888) 629-0444
Email: tchristie@banyangold.com

David Rutt
Tel: (888) 629-0444
Email: drutt@banyangold.com

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT: Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. This news release contains forward-looking information, which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, Banyan's objectives, goals or future plans, statements regarding exploration expectations, exploration or development plans and mineral resource estimates. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, uncertainties inherent in resource estimates , capital and operating costs varying significantly from estimates, the preliminary nature of metallurgical test results, delays in obtaining or failures to obtain required governmental, environmental or other project approvals, political risks, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, changes in equity markets, inflation, changes in exchange rates, fluctuations in commodity prices, delays in the development of projects and the other risks involved in the mineral exploration and development industry, enhanced risks inherent to conducting business in any jurisdiction, and those risks set out in Banyan's public documents filed on SEDAR. Although Banyan believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. Banyan disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

Statements in this news release regarding Banyan which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as "may", "will", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations.

[1] The gold price and cost assumptions are consistent with current pricing assumptions and costs, and in particular are consistent with those employed for recent technical reports for similar pit-constrained Yukon gold projects.

SOURCE: Banyan Gold Corp.