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St. Andrew Goldfields digs deep for three new mines

With cash in hand, people on the ground and confidence in the air, St. Andrew Goldfields officials are more than optimistic that three gold properties nearly 100 kilometres east of Timmins will be in production by next year.
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St. Andrew Goldfields will spend $25 million through 2009 to begin bringing the Holloway, Holt and Hislop mines into production by 2010.


With cash in hand, people on the ground and confidence in the air, St. Andrew Goldfields officials are more than optimistic that three gold properties nearly 100 kilometres east of Timmins will be in production by next year.

"Our focus will definitely be to go back into production in the near-term, and do more exploration in the eastern portion of the camp," says Jacques Perron, president and CEO.

"We have an excellent package of exploration properties as well with lots of potential for the future, so we're happy about our prospects."

Throughout the last year, whisperings have slipped through various corners of Timmins about the potential for the Holloway, Holt and Hislop mines to return to production.

However, these whispers were vindicated in early May 2009 when St. Andrew closed $16.2 million in debt financing, allowing the company to move ahead with its ambitious plans to bring all three into production by the end of 2010.

More than $25 million will be spent on the Holloway and Hislop mines this year alone, $10 million of which will go towards services and contractors.

The company's various holdings in the Timmins camp contain more than three million ounces of resources.

This includes the Holloway-Holt property, which Perron refers to as "the most important property," and contains 1.2 million ounces of gold resources across the two former mines.

The Holloway Mine is currently undergoing pre-production work, a process which is expected to take six months in anticipation of putting it in production by the fourth quarter of 2009.

Much of the advanced work has already been completed, including development, as well as the ventilation and ramp systems.

The resource totals for the East Timmins properties fail to include any numbers from the Hislop mine, an open pit operation which was mined by St. Andrew from 1990-1994, and then again through 1999 and 2000.

No industry-compliant figures are yet available for Hislop, which is currently the subject of a prefeasibility study due out by early July.

In advance of the study, 10,300 metres of core were drilled on Hislop through the first five months of 2009, while 7,000 metres of historical core were also sampled.

Perron anticipates bringing the open pit online by the end of 2009, or early 2010 as crews will simply continue to mine the orebody by simply following the ore structures on the property.

Once these two projects have begun production, development work will begin on the Holt mine so as to get it into production by the second half of 2010.

As another past producer, the Holt mine also hosts a 3,000-tonne-per-day mill, which will process the feed from the Holloway and Hislop properties as they come online.

Other past producing mines in the area represent other exploration potential for Perron, including the Taylor deposit 53 kilometres east of Timmins, which contains 500,000 ounces of gold. The Aquarius deposit, located 38 kilometres east of Timmins, covers 5,341 hectares and contains 1.1 million ounces.

"We're very happy to be in northeastern Ontario, which is a safe and solid mining jurisdiction," says Perron. "We think we have an excellent exploration upside in the camp, and we definitely believe there's a lot more gold to be found in this area."

Part of Perron's confidence in the company's future stems from a new management team which has been largely rebuilt over the last 18 months.

In fact, Perron himself came over from IAMGOLD Corporation in 2007, where he served as the senior vice-president of the Americas division.

Recent changes include last year's addition of Duncan Middlemiss, appointed to the position of vice-president and general manager of East Timmins Operations.

Middlemiss previously served as mine manager for Kirkland Lake Gold Inc., as well as chief mine engineer for Barrick Gold's Holt-McDermott Mine.

www.standrewgoldfields.com