Harte Gold has hired a Sudbury mine builder to start the underground workings at its Sugar Zone gold deposit near White River.
Technica Mining has signed a second contract with the Toronto junior miner to extend an underground ramp and start development of stopes and vent raises in preparation for full commercial production in the second quarter of 2018.
"We would like to thank Technica Mining and their team of professionals who did an excellent job completing Harte Gold's 70,000-tonne bulk sample with 'zero' lost time accidents,” said Harte Gold president-CEO Stephen Roman in a statement. “This is an outstanding achievement.”
Technica was hired in 2015 to extract a 70,000-tonne bulk sample and start construction of surface infrastructure, including collaring the portal.
The last shipment of gold ore from that bulk sample went to Barrick’s Hemlo mill on March 24.
In a March 28 news release, Harte said tonnage and grade reconciliation will be completed once Barrick processes the ore. However, the company expects the final results will show a total of 69,112 wet tonnes (67,454 dry tonnes) with an average recovered grade of approximately 8.5 grams per tonne.
The Sugar Zone Property is 60 kilometres east of the Barrick’s Hemlo gold complex and is 25 kilometres north of White River off of Highway 17.
The property holds an indicated resource of 1,117,000 tonnes, grading 8.41 grams/ton (g/t) of gold for 302,000 ounces of contained gold, and an inferred resource of 417,000 tonnes g/t for 95,000 ounces of contained gold.
Halyard Inc. has signed an engineering procurement construction and management to finish the final engineering on a 550-tonne-per-day mill at the site, and will be in charge of the construction in time for commissioning by the first quarter of 2018.
Harte has also widened its footprint of the Dayohessarah Greenstone Belt by staking an additional 32,592 hectares nearby. The new ground has seen limited exploration but there is enough historical geophysics and geological data for the company to believe there is “significant new discovery potential.”
In order to line up exploration drill targets for this year, the company is beginning a high resolution airborne magnetic (7,870-line km) and electromagnetic survey over their entire claim package.