Banyan Announces Closing $4.32 M First Tranche of Financing and Increase to $4.74 M in Total

VANCOUVER, July 29, 2020 - Banyan Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "Banyan") (TSXV:BYN) is pleased to announce, subject to approval by TSX-V, that it is closing the first tranche of $4,320,000 of the private placement announced July 8, 2020 (the "Private Placement") and, due to strong demand, further announces an increase in the total size of the Private Placement to $4,740,000 with the second and final tranche expected to close on or before August 6, 2020.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Private Placement to advance its mineral exploration and development projects and for general corporate purposes. The Phase 2 Exploration Program at AurMac will include additional diamond drilling, geotechnical drilling, metallurgical test work, environmental baseline data collection and community consultation.

The first tranche includes a combination of 12,500,000 Charity Flow Through Shares at $0.28, 2,000,000 Flow Through Shares at $0.25 and 1,600,000 Common Shares at $0.20 (together the "Offering"). The upsized financing of $420,000 will consist of 1,500,000 Charity Flow Through Shares at $0.28 and is expected to close as part of the second and final tranche.

"The strong interest in this financing is a testament to the confidence in the team and growth potential of AurMac," stated Tara Christie, President and CEO. "With a strong treasury and a project located adjacent to mines of our two largest shareholders, Victoria Gold and Alexco Resources, we are now well positioned to strategically advance this project to the next level through 2020 and 2021."

At the close of the Private Placement, the major shareholders will be Alexco Resource Corp. (9.4%), Victoria Gold Corporation (8%), Sprott (3%) and Osisko Gold Royalties (4.9%).

The flow through gross proceeds component received from the sale to subscribers of the Charity Flow Through Shares and Flow Through 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 such subscribers effective not later than 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. In connection with the closing of the Private Placement, the Company will pay a cash finder's fee in the amount of $33,930 on the first tranche of the financing and up to 6% on the balance.

Certain insiders of the Company participated in the Private Placement for $125,000, comprised of 468,000 Flow Through Shares and 40,000 Common Shares, respectively. Such participation represents a related party transaction under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"), but the transaction is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 as neither the fair market value of the subject matter of the transaction, nor the consideration paid, exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization.

Under applicable Canadian securities laws, all securities issued pursuant to the first tranche of the Private Placement are subject to, among other things, a statutory hold period of four months and one day. The Private Placement remains subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSX-V").

Upcoming Events:

Upcoming events are listed on the company website and include:

Webinars

August 5^th - Hosted by StreetCents Media, moderated by Robert Sinn
August 20^th - Hosted by Invest Yukon
September 22^nd 2020 - Hosted by Adelaide Capital

Mines and Money- Virtual Conference - August 31 - September 1, 2020

Precious Metals Summit Beaver Creek, Virtual Conference - September 15-17, 2020

Qualified Person

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.

About Banyan

Banyan's primary asset AurMac is adjacent to Victoria Gold's new Eagle Gold Mine, in Canada's Yukon Territory, which announced commercial production on July 1, 2020. The AurMac initial resource of 903,945 oz. Au (see Table 1 below) was announced in May 2020. Our major strategic shareholders include Osisko Gold Royalties, Sprott Funds, Alexco Resource Corp., and Victoria Gold Corp.. 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 92 sq. km 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. The property is 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.

The 2020 Initial Mineral Resource Estimate prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") guidelines for the AurMac Property is 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 slope¹
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.

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.

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 Corp.

(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.

SOURCE: Banyan Gold Corp.