TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-V-listed explorer Integra Gold has lifted the total compliant indicated resources at its flagship Lamaque South project, in Quebec, by 40%, boosted by significant growth at the project’s largest and highest-grade target, the Triangle Zone.

The Vancouver-based company on Wednesday said it had updated the mineral resource estimates for the Triangle and Parallel zones within a 2 km corridor, immediately east of the city of Val-d’Or.

The updated resource estimate integrated 45 400 m of new drilling completed on the two main gold zones, lifting the indicated resources 40% to 1.06-million ounces of gold at a grade of 7.1 g/t gold.

The inferred resources rose 13% to 330 990 oz of gold at a grade of 8.4 g/t gold.

The Triangle zone resource increased 173%, from 190 760 oz to 520 630 oz of gold at a grade of 8.3 g/t.

The latest resource estimates did not include resources obtained through the recent acquisition of the Sigma-Lamaque mill and mine complex that comprised 586 000 oz of gold in the measured and indicated categories, contained within 3.7-million tonnes of ore at a grade of 5 g/t gold. The property also held 1.85-million ounces of inferred resources within 9.16-million tonnes of ore at a grade of 6.3 g/t.

Without incorporating the new resources the company’s base case scenario, when using a gold price of $1 175/oz and an exchange rate of C$1.14 to the US dollar, resulted in the project returning a pretax internal rate of return of 77% and net present value, at a 5% discount, of C$184.3-million.

Integra in January released the results of an updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on the Lamaque South project, which reported that preproduction capital requirements had been reduced from C$69.2-million to C$61.9-million, while the preproduction period was also reduced from two years to 18 months, as a result of using the existing infrastructure and permits received from the acquisition of the Sigma/Lamaque mill and mine complex.

According to the PEA, the life-of-mine all-in sustaining costs would be C$731/oz, a 17% cost reduction over the previous March 2014 PEA.

“With future studies, we anticipate the Triangle zone will become an increasingly significant part of the mine plan at the project, beyond what we have indicated in our recent PEA update. What is particularly encouraging is the indication of larger, potentially bulk minable, gold mineralisation at the Triangle zone, given the widths encountered in drilling and modelled in the new resource estimate,” president and CEO Stephen de Jong added.

He noted that this thicker style of gold mineralisation was reminiscent of the zones mined at the past producing Lamaque mine, next to and directly north of the Lamaque South property, where Teck Corporation produced 4.5-million ounces of gold from a combination of narrow-vein hosted ore and larger ore zones that were mined using bulk underground mining techniques.

Integra stated that there were a number of other high-priority gold occurrences on the property that were now being drill tested as part of the 50 000 m drill programme announced late last month. Six diamond drills were currently operating at Lamaque South.