Drilling at Pure Gold’s Madsen project in Ontario has intersected gold mineralization between the 8 and Russet South zones and identified two shoots below the Wedge zone.
A drill hole testing the gap between the 8 zone and Russet South resource boundaries returned 51 metres of 1 g/t gold, including an 0.9 metre intercept grading 9.9 g/t gold.
This intercept follows up on the company’s release from October 9, which intersected gold mineralization over 10 metres approximately 750 metres up dip of the 8 zone. The latest hole was completed 100 meters up dip of the prior drilling.
Results from the Wedge zone returned an intercept of 1.8 metres grading 5.2 g/t gold from 300 metres down dip of previous drilling. An additional hole completed in this area returned 1.5 metres of 51.5 g/t gold.
At the northern end of the Wedge area, drilling returned 1.7 metres of 8.7 g/t gold from 100 metres down dip of the current resource boundary.
“Deep pierce points along the entire seven kilometre trend intersecting the same style of mineralization, geology, alteration and high-grade gold support the opportunity for growth and scalability of the project for the long term. Today’s results continue to crystallize this opportunity, with drilling successfully pushing the envelope downward at Wedge and a second test of the 8 zone gap returning high grade gold,” Darin Labrenz, Pure Gold’s president and CEO commented in the press release.
The 8 zone is the highest-grade gold zone discovered at the Madsen project to date and contains indicated resources of 458,000 tonnes grading 20.5 g/t gold for a total of 301,000 oz. and inferred resources of 202,000 tonnes grading 12.4 g/t gold for a total of 80,000 oz.
Madsen’s current reserves stand at 3.5 million tonnes grading 9 g/t gold for a total of 1 million oz; within total project-wide indicated resources of 7.2 million tonnes grading 8.9 g/t gold. Additional inferred resources for the project stand at 1.9 million tonnes at 7.7 g/t gold.
The financed Madsen project is currently scheduled to start gold production in late 2020.
Based on a feasibility study released earlier this year, the Madsen underground mine would have a 12 year life, producing up to 125,000 oz. of payable gold annually at a pre-production total capital cost of C$95.1 million. The associated after tax 5% net present value estimate came in at C$247 million with a 36% internal rate of return.
The Madsen mine has produced a total of 2.5 million oz. at a head grade of 9.7 g/t gold between 1938 and 1999.
(This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal)