TORONTO (miningweekly.com) - TSX Venture Exchange-listed Midlands Minerals has completed a scoping study on its flagship Sian gold project, in Ghana, and expects to announce the details of the report in the next couple of weeks, CEO Kim Harris said on Friday.

If the company can raise the necessary financing, Sian could start production as early as a year from now, she said.

The past-producing mine operated for just three years before it was closed in 2004, and most of the infrastructure, including a processing plant, is still in place.

The scoping study was handled by South Africa's EPC Engineering, which has also indicated it could complete the refurbishment and recommissioning of the plant within a six-month period, Harris said at a Toronto event hosted by MineAfrica.

The Sian openpit mine produced gold from 2001 to 2004. Operations were halted when the company that owned it, Chinese-owned and -backed Sian Goldfields, struggled with high costs and escalating strip ratios, and eventually ran out of money.

“It's got all the elements – we have a resource already, we have a plant, we have a mining lease, it's fully permitted, it's ready to go,” Harris said.

The scoping study will pave the way for an update of the feasibility study that was drawn up by the previous owners of the asset.

Sian currently has an NI 43-101-compliant resource of 400 000 oz, but Harris believes the project has the potential for a multimillion-ounce deposit.

To begin with, Midlands plans to increase and upgrade the resource both by infill drilling and by drilling deeper.

If it can raise the money it needs, the company aims to boost the current 400 000 oz resource to at least one-million ounces in the next six to nine months, at the same time as the refurbishment work is under way, Harris said.

“We just need to get out there, drill, and make it all come together.”