"The delivery of the motor and drive train was the only major factor beyond our control. It's been painful to see costs increase while we had to wait for these items," Silver Bullet's CEO John Carter said.
"Now, it should take between 30 and 40 days to complete construction, following which the field team will run roughly two weeks' worth of low-grade material to fine-tune the components. Then we intend to start processing the higher-grade material from our nearby Buckeye Silver mine," he said.
The western United States-focused company said that in anticipation of the mill's completion, mineralised material extracted from its nearby Buckeye Silver mine had been stockpiled at the mill site.
Once in production, Silver Bullet planned to produce silver dore bars to be sold at a smelter or a commodities trader, the company said.
"Getting into production logically leads to risk-mitigation cash flow into the company," Carter said.
The cash payments would be a welcome relief for Silver Bullet, which has seen escalating costs of shipping, parts, supplies, fuel, services and equipment since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Then we can turn our efforts to the Washington mine in Idaho and the McMorris mine in Arizona, both former producers. The Washington mine seems to be even better than we expected, as shown by the recent bulk sample results returning 55.5 ounces [of silver] per tonne," he said.
The company traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange at C$0.45/share on February 7, which was up 7% day-on-day.
Shares in Silver Bullet began trading on the TSX on December 6 last year. Since then, it reached a peak of C$0.52/share on January 21.
The company had a market capitalisation of C$25.02 million.
