A proposed gold mine for Guysborough County is getting bigger.
Anaconda Mining is now proposing to build a full-scale processing facility in Goldboro that would see gold ore bars created onsite. Previously, the company was only planning to create a concentrate from the host rock excavated at its proposed open-pit mine and barge it to Newfoundland for processing at its Pointe Rousse facility.
“The main reason is the exploration work has been going so well expanding the deposit,” said Dustin Angelo, president of Anaconda Mining.
“We have a lot more mineral resources, which justifies putting all the upfront capital into the ground at Goldboro.”
The new plan sees the upfront capital cost go up from about $90 million to about $100 million.
Anaconda acquired the project from Orex Exploration in 2017 via a share swap, with a total mineral estimate of 870,000 ounces. Of that, they expected to be able to recover about 370,000 ounces. After 12,000 metres of drilling, the total estimated resource has grown to over a million ounces. Another 5,000-metre drilling program begins this month that Angelo is hoping to continue in order to expand the estimated deposit.
“As of right now, we’re still under the current environmental assessment process,” said Angelo.
The new plan will add a cyanide process and accompanying tailings ponds to the company’s proposed mine. Angelo said the processing system they would use is “very similar” to the one used by Atlantic Gold at Moose River. The company registered its environmental assessment last summer.
Several public groups responded with concern that old contamination from mine tailings would be disturbed by the new operation and released into the environment.
As a result, in October, former environment minister Margaret Miller ordered the company to prepare a focus report that provided more a more detailed description of the preparation, layout, operation and eventual remediation of the proposed mine.
As well, details were sought on how various flora and fauna would be affected, what mitigation measures would be taken and whether contaminated tailings from former mines operated on the same site would be dealt with.
Angelo said Monday the company continues to work toward filing the required report.
The expanded resource and processing facility won’t likely result in significantly more jobs being created beyond the 150 to 200 already planned for the mine, he said, but it would result in it operating for longer than the 10 years predicted in the initial environmental assessment registration document. If the environmental assessment is ultimately approved, the company wants to start construction of the mine next year.
With its estimated costs of production, the mine breaks even at a gold price of $800 an ounce. The spot price for Canadian gold on Monday was $1,745 an ounce.
