BHM – Broken Hill Mines Limited
A mining town that built BHP bets on silver again
Mark WembridgePat Walta’s Broken Hill Mines runs two of the three operations that sit atop the world’s largest and richest deposit of silver, lead and zinc, and the ASX-listed miner’s executive chairman reckons everyone would win if his company hit the trifecta.
The deposit that has underpinned the economy of Broken Hill since the 1880s runs intermittently across 28 kilometres, and the extraction of 250 million tonnes of ore has barely dented its reserves.
However, despite the immense volume of minerals waiting to be plucked from the earth of this far western NSW township, its miners have struggled to turn a profit due to a lack of processing infrastructure, high costs and historically low prices.
But that equation could change for the mining community and town of Broken Hill, originally dubbed Australia’s “Silver City” in the 1800s, given the recent bull run in the metal’s price, new investment in processing, and the cost savings that flow from recent consolidation.
In 2024, Walta’s Broken Hill Mines inked a deal with one of the town’s local mining legend’s Craig Williams to access his family’s Pinnacles mine 15 kilometres south-west of the town. Walta’s punt and timing could not have been more propitious.
In mid-2025, just as BHM floated on the ASX, the silver market went on a tear. Fears of undersupply and geopolitical tensions sent the price of the precious metal to highs above $US120 per ounce. In February, the Perth Mint alone sold 1.9 million ounces of silver, which is four times the amount sold in the same month a year ago.
“There isn’t any new supply coming online, so it’s a good time to be in silver. I was happy when silver was $US40 an ounce. I’m ecstatic now!” says Walta, a metallurgist who co-founded BHM.
“Gold is a store of wealth – a hedge against inflation. Silver is like a mini version of that. Where does it go now? I have no idea. But the world doesn’t feel like it’s getting any more stable in terms of global conflicts, interest rate rises and inflation.”
While silver’s rally hasn’t matched the stratospheric rise in the gold price, Matthew Hine, chief executive of Endurance Mining, an Australian silver producer that is considering an ASX listing this year, believes that pricing will remain strong in the medium to long term, particularly as output struggles to keep pace.
“The silver rally has captivated markets after its breakout following five years of supply deficit and demand growth across AI, data centres and electric vehicles,” he says. “Pricing will remain strong as industrial demand increases and miners’ output struggles to keep pace.”
It’s why Walta believes now is the time for BHM to accelerate silver production and for the Broken Hill region to consolidate its mines and deposits. Broken Hill is famously the birthplace of Australia’s largest company and the world’s largest miner BHP.
There are other silver producers looking to boost production alongside Walta’s BHM and Endurance Mining, such as ASX-listed Investigator Silver which raised $55 million to advance its Paris Silver project in South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
Long history, glittering future
While Broken Hill was the genesis for BHP, which was founded there in 1885 as Broken Hill Proprietary, the Big Australian no longer has a local foothold. Now three operators dominate the town: BHM’s Rasp and Pinnacles mines, as well as Perilya’s Broken Hill.After Walta’s BHM bought the Rasp mine, it inked a profit share joint venture over Pinnacles, which has been owned and operated by the Williams family since 1952 and is thought to hold 6 million tonnes of silver, zinc and lead.
The third mine, Broken Hill, remains under the control of Perilya, owned by China’s Zhongjin Lingnan Mining. A deal between BHM and Perilya is possible, according to Carlos Crowley Vazquez, a mining analyst at Blue Ocean Equities.
“Discussion with the Chinese owners is ongoing. There’s a deal to be done there. It makes a lot of sense as there are synergies,” Vazquez says. “Perilya is running a larger plant that is working at 40 per cent capacity. There’s a natural deal that should happen here.”
Despite the immense mineral wealth located under the Broken Hill earth, the town’s miners have not flourished in the same way as rival gold miners around the country. A combination of high operating costs, labour shortages, historically depressed metal prices and a lack of scale have created roadblocks for local miners.
Walta says a consolidation of all three of the town’s big mines could spark “a revitalisation of the city”.
“Our strategy is simple: It’s about consolidating Broken Hill. We married together some beautiful infrastructure. [Processing] plants here have, for decades, underperformed their capacity because they simply couldn’t get enough feed.”
Consolidating the mines will increase their scale, their output and their profitability, he argues.
In the final three months of 2025, the rate of production at BHM’s Rasp mine was the highest since June 2020, with silver output rising 25 per cent from the previous quarter to 51,800 ounces.
The Williams family explored a listing of Pinnacles in 2008, but their efforts were stymied by the global financial crisis, and they retained the asset. The family’s scion, Craig, has lamented the lack of scale that was holding back production at Pinnacles, and noted that the deal with BHM would accelerate output from the mine.
In 2024 – its most recently filed annual results – Perilya returned to the black, posting a $440,000 profit after recording a $64.3 million loss in 2023. Perilya declined to comment.
Investors have followed the higher silver price and thrown their cash behind BHM. The miner raised $38.5 million last November through a placement at $1 per share aimed at accelerating growth at Rasp and Pinnacles. Since then, its shares peaked at $1.36 before falling back to trade around 98¢.
“There’s a saying that Broken Hill has had a 10-year mine life for the past 140 years. But there’s no reason why it won’t run for another 100 years. The orebody is huge.”
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