Pan American Silver founder and Canadian mining tycoon Ross Beaty hasn’t led a company for nine years, but that will change once Trek Mining, NewCastle Gold and Beaty’s own Anfield Gold merge.

“To build a nice mid-tier gold producer is something I wanted to do for the last couple of years,” he told BNN in an interview. Trek and NewCastle each own one major asset (in Brazil and California, respectively), and Beaty’s Anfield has the capital.

Beaty says that the new company will focus on two projects, both past-producing operations.

Trek Mining, then known as Luna Gold, suspended mining at the Aurizona heap leach operation in 2015. Aurizona produced a total of 329,042 ounces of gold over a period of five years from 2010 to 2015. Luna said when operations ceased in 2015 that it needed to raise money to build new crushing and grinding circuits to handle tougher ore.

Now, Beaty believes technical challenges are “solvable”.

“The team knows what to do,” he said. “I have great confidence they will be able to fix things for a very low capital cost.”

He added that the merger will provide Trek with the capital it needs. Permits are also in place. Beaty says the revamped mine will be in production by next year at this time.

The merger still needs to be approved by NewCastle and Anfield shareholders at special meetings in December. The combined company will operate under the name Equinox Gold but has not yet begun trading in Toronto under its new ticker, EQX.

A self-proclaimed gold bull and avid investor in the base metals sector - owning shares of Arena Minerals (AN.V), Galantas Gold (GAL.V) and Lumina Gold (LUM.V) - Beaty is also known for his investments in clean energy.

He founded Magma Energy, now Alterra Power Corp. (AXY.TO), in 2008. That company is now set to be acquired by Innergex Renewable Energy (INE.TO), which owns hydroelectric projects in Ontario and Quebec, among other assets.

“It is a great organic fit,” said Beaty of Innergex’s takeover proposal. “The problem with Alterra was we never had a low enough cost of capital to really generate big returns for shareholders. Innergex is going to take our assets, lower our cost of capital, and make out like bandit, I think.”

Of his support for clean energy and a lower-carbon economy, he doesn’t mince words.

“We just have to stop puking carbon into the atmosphere and polluting the air because, ultimately, it is going to hurt bio diversity,” he said. “It is going to hurt the ocean. It is going to hurt humans.”