Resource World Magazine

o c t o b e r / n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 5 www.resourceworld.com 5 e d i t o r ' s c o m m e n t s E l l s w o r t h D i c k s o n A n indispensable metal, that's how The Silver Institute character- izes silver, and with good reason. There are not many metals with as many uses as silver. Calling it "the poor man's gold" does it a disservice as it can stand tall on its own. One reason, of course, is that it is real money – not unbacked fiat (paper) currency. The CPM Silver Yearbook noted that global demand for silver coins hit a new record high in 2014 of 140 mil- lion ounces sold. Obviously, people around the world value silver as it is an easy to liquidate, portable safe haven for storing wealth. Like gold, there are also paper ounces of silver. CPM reported that investors in physically backed silver exchange traded funds were net buyers of 6.94 million ounces in 2014. India and China were the largest buyers of silver for investment pur- poses in 2014. This is our silver issue where we are publishing six silver-related articles which we hope you will find of interest. On our cover is a unique silver coin struck by the Royal Canadian Mint. The one-ounce coin features a three-dimensional hologram with the northern lights that change color. Besides investment and jewelry, silver plays other important roles; however, its use in industry is growing by the month – see Simon Rees's article on page 8. For example, silver demand from the elec- tronics and batteries sector rose to 223.7 million ounces in 2014, up 2.45% from 2013. Other new uses of silver include light emitting diodes (LEDs) organic light emitting diode technologies, radio fre- quency identification devices and water purification. Silver is naturally antibacte- rial and is used in bandages and even in Lululemon clothing to stop odours. In additon to an article on the uses of silver, we have interviews with silver experts such as author-analyst David Morgan as well as Randy Smallwood, President of Silver Wheaton, the world's largest precious metal streaming company, and Robert Archer, President and CEO of Great Panther Silver, a Mexican silver producer. For years now, Resource World has been invited on the Yukon Media Tour of various exploration and mining projects. While the Yukon is not as wildly active as a few years ago, the hardy explorers up there are still carrying on – finding ore bodies and developing mines. Western Copper and Gold and Victoria Gold are develop- ment-stage projects, while Kaminak Gold has become a stellar exploration project See page 18. Diamonds continue to be a fascinat- ing industrial sector and Prentice Lee at Canaccord Genuity has highlighted the activities of a number of good diamond projects in this issue, mostly in Canada. One exploration program that we will be closely watching is Equitas Resources. After Robert Friedland's monumental Voisey's Bay nickel-copper-cobalt discov- ery (Diamond Fields) in Labrador, now in production, there was a huge staking rush since these deposits often occur in clusters; there were however no new discoveries. Using new advanced, deep-sensing geo- physics, Equitas has identified a number of anomies that it is drilling. This could get very exciting. See page 45. Since we are Resource World, we are of the view that the sun's energy is also a resource. Hence, we are also presenting a number of solar power articles in our Alternative Energy section. n Silver: an indispensable metal ellsworth Dickson, Editor-in-Chief email: editor@resourceworld.com t: 604 484 3800 | 1 877 484 3800

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