'Excellent progress' made with restart of Timmins gold mine

Management at Gowest Gold are pleased with the pace of progress in restarting the underground development of the Bradshaw Mine, outside Timmins, three months ago.

In a July 11 news release, the company said, to date, 9,974 tons of ore is stockpiled in preparation for being trucked to Northern Sun’s Redstone Mill for processing in the fourth quarter once the upgrade of the mill and tailings facility is completed later this year.

Bradshaw, Gowest’s only mining asset, is 32 kilometres northeast of the city.

“While it’s only been three months since we began the restart of Bradshaw, working together, our team and partners have made excellent progress on all fronts, including with our recently launched diamond drilling exploration program to expand our resources,"said CEO Dan Gagnon in a news release.

“We are well on our way to delivering greater than 20 metres per day of ramp development and an average of 800 tons per day of ore in our first 12 months of operation.  We are also targeting starting the toll milling our ore at the Redstone Mill in the fourth quarter of this year.”

The company reports there have been no injuries since the April restart.

Underground work is focused on the development and production of the East Zone, installing ventilation infrastructure, and development of a ramp to expand and access new zones.

Want to read more stories about business in the North? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Gowest said two development ramps are both advancing well toward providing underground access to the initial gold zones. The East Zone Ramp is at the 80-metre mark on its way to 100 metres. The access ramp to the Central and West Zones of the property has been developed down to 67.5 metres.

Underground sill development, which provides direct access to the ore zones, remains on schedule. More than 4,000 metres of sill development is planned by year’s end.

Foraco Canada, the drilling contractor, conducted the first long-hole stope blast on July 4 between the 45 and 30-metre level.

The underground ventilation upgrade is also well underway, including an Alimak raise from 60 metres to surface that was completed in June. A surface fan and heater will be installed to provide additional ventilation for all underground areas and help increase future underground production.

An ore sorter is commissioned and it will be put into use with the first development ore later this month.

On the exploration front, Orbit Garant Drilling began a planned 5,000-metre drill program in mid-June aimed at expanding the gold resource at Bradshaw and test gold zone elsewhere on the company’s North Timmins Gold Project.