Interview with Bart Jaworski, CEO of Group Eleven Resources
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/group-eleven-resources-tsxvzng-new-high-grade-lead-zinc-discovery-at-stonepark-11079
Recording date: 17th September 2026
Group Eleven Resources (TSXV:ZNG) has added a fresh dimension to its Ballywire discovery in Ireland: materially higher germanium grades, confirmed through a more accurate assay method. The company re-analysed 220 previously submitted samples from five drill holes, switching from lithium borate fusion to sodium peroxide fusion - a technique that better retains germanium during sample digestion. The result was a 68% average increase in reported germanium grades across the re-tested samples, with the strongest individual interval reaching 94 g/t Ge, well above typical grades of 20-40 g/t seen across the batch.
This matters because germanium is not an incidental addition. CEO Bart Jaworski explained that the metal tracks closely with sphalerite, the zinc-bearing mineral already central to Ballywire's zinc-lead-silver-copper discovery: "Whenever we see high zinc numbers, we tend to have the highest germanium numbers along with it." In practice, this means Group Eleven is capturing a scarce, high-value byproduct metal within intervals it would already be reporting for zinc, lead, silver and copper - without additional exploration cost.
The timing is notable. Germanium, used in AI infrastructure and fibre optics, trades at roughly US$200 per ounce outside China, up about 25% over the past year, as Chinese export restrictions imposed in 2023 continue to limit Western supply. Very little of the world's germanium comes from dedicated mines; it is recovered almost entirely as a byproduct of a small number of zinc smelters, making new supply additions structurally scarce. Jaworski described the dynamic bluntly: "There's not enough in the Western world coming that we need to backfill for China."
Operationally, Group Eleven remains well-funded. A C$12 million financing closed in March 2026 is supporting a 67,000-metre drill campaign for 2026, with four rigs currently active at Ballywire and roughly 15 additional holes in the pipeline. A further 110 samples from those 15 holes are still to be reassayed for germanium, suggesting more grade revisions could follow. Ballywire itself remains substantially untested: of four gravity anomalies spanning a 6-kilometre trend, drilling to date has concentrated almost entirely on one.
Investors should treat today's news as an enhancement to an existing thesis rather than a new one. The core investment case at Group Eleven still rests on the scale and grade of the underlying zinc-lead-silver-copper system at Ballywire, and on the path toward a maiden resource estimate. Germanium adds a genuine, if still unquantified, economic sweetener - genuine because the metal is present in meaningful, high-grade concentrations; unquantified because metallurgical test work establishing recoveries and payability has not yet been carried out for any metal at Ballywire, germanium included. With a small, tightly balanced global germanium market, a discovery of this scale could carry a strategic premium once those metallurgical questions are answered - but that remains a forward catalyst rather than a settled fact today.
