Toronto’s New Gold, northwestern Ontario’s newest miner, reported it is 60 per cent complete on the construction of its Rainy River open-pit gold project near Fort Frances.
In an Oct. 27 release of its third-quarter results, the company said the construction of all the structural components of the processing facilities is largely complete.
Construction is finished on two of five dams of the water management facility.
More than 16 million tonnes of overburden and waste stripping has been completed to date.
The company said it is currently mining at a rate of approximately 85,000 tonnes per day with mining activities at Rainy River continuing to accelerate.
The open-pit mine, located 65 kilometres northwest of Fort Frances, is scheduled to start production in mid-2017.
New Gold’s operating team is mining at a rate of 85,000 tonnes per day and is scheduled to increase the daily mining rate in November with the commissioning of an additional shovel and three more haul trucks, along with making some productivity improvements.
The daily mining rate should steadily increase to over 145,000 tonnes per day in early 2017.
During the third quarter, New Gold spent $131 million on the project, bringing the total capital expenditures to $632 million as of Sept. 30.
Approximately $365 million will be spent before the whole operation goes into production. Rainy River is expected to produce an average of 325,000 ounces of gold annually.
