TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Pending the completion of a crowdfunded campaign to raise $1-million, that would allow it to upgrade its fleet of mining equipment, junior explorer Windsor Gold Mining and Exploration, a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Gold Resources, is eager to start washing placer gold from the high-grade soils of the Cariboo region, in the central interior of British Columbia this coming spring.

Former president and CEO Adrian LaPrise told Mining Weekly Online that the company had been working on the Canadian Creek property, a 50 ha parcel of land between Grouse Creek, and French Creek, since 1996 and extensive testing had estimated that they could recover up to one ounce of gold for every cubic tonne of dirt they mine.

“The property is very valuable to us and after several years of testing we have decided that the time had come to go into production in the spring of 2015,” he said during a telephone call from Vancouver.

Parent firm Maple Leaf Gold was currently running its initial public offering (IPO) through ‘Funded By Me’ from November 5, until December 5. However, LaPrise said that the IPO had been extended to about the middle of the first quarter next year.

He noted that Nordic MTF (NGM) had approved Maple Leaf Gold for listing on the Swedish Stock Exchange, as long as it met the capital requirement of ten-million Swedish Krona (just over C$1.5-million). Once this requirement had been met, the company’s shares would be publicly traded under the ticker MLG MTF.

Funding in the past had been a cause of delay for the company, which had previously planned to start the placer-washing operation in 2013.

“We wanted to get on a stock exchange first, so that we could raise enough funding with an IPO. What we have done is to merge Windsor Gold with Scandia Capital Corp, in Toronto, in May. This allowed us to raise money to go to Sweden and apply for a listing on the stock exchange.

“We got approved about a month ago,” he said, adding that once this process had been completed, the company planned to list in the US on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board, or Pink Sheets, from where it would also like to list on the Frankfurt Exchange, in order to become an established Canadian major mining company.

HIGH-GRADE POTENTIAL

Windsor Gold owns three mining claims in British Columbia. The first claim, Maple Leaf 1, in Canadian Creek, was ready for mining production starting on May 1.

LaPrise noted that geologist Herbert Forbes Jr had completed a technical report in observance of Canada's National Instrument (NI) 43-101-compliant report on the project, which estimated the claim to contain about 168 000 oz of gold, giving the company 20 to 30 years of mining in the area. The report had estimated that it could produce about 5 600 oz/y at full tilt, or realise up to $6-million in sales at an assumed gold price of $1 100/oz.

The extraction costs came in under $400/oz of gold, or $600/oz when including overhead costs. The reasons for the low extraction costs were owing to the method of openpit mining and the high yield of gold per tonne of gravel.

“This makes the mining operation highly profitable, even in a low gold price environment of around $1 100/oz,” LaPrise noted.

The British Columbia government had also undertaken some geological tests on the property’s black sands, with favourable results, LaPrise pointed out.

The project also had a four-year mining permit in place, with the reclamation bond also paid.

“We are just waiting for spring and the snow to melt, before we can start washing,” LaPrise said.

He said that Windsor had earlier this year added to the land package, extending the contiguous land parcel by about 80 ha. LaPrise added that the company also had some other prospects in the Cariboo region, which, according to him, had been listed as the second-largest gold-producing region in North America.

All infrastructure, such as roads and electricity, were already established at the project site. The company planned to get the mining equipment on site during April, and start mining from May 1, until about the first week in October, when the weather was expected to close the yearly mining window.

However, the company would not sit idle during the tough Canadian winter months, and would instead focus on its placer properties in Arizona and Nevada.

LaPrise said that the company already had a NI 43-101-compliant technical report on the Happy 2 mine, in Pinal County, Arizona, in hand. He said the Arizona project only had about six months of permitting paperwork ahead before Maple Leaf would be able to start washing gold from the Arizona soil.