TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Gold junior Maudore Minerals’ plan to place its advanced-stage Vezza project on care and maintenance has been delayed as its main contractor pulled its crews from the project earlier than planned, owing to a dispute over efforts to renegotiate contractual payment terms as work draws to a close.
Maudore in July said that the current low gold price environment and a new three-dimensional structural model of the Sleeping Giant deposit, in Quebec’s Abitibi greenstone belt, which it acquired through a subsidiary of North American Palladium in March, had prompted it to shift its focus from developing the Vezza project, to mining “multiple high-grade opportunities” within the existing mine environment at Sleeping Giant.
The company said it planned to finish mining and processing mineralised material at Vezza over the next several months, while deploying a small workforce at Sleeping Giant to prepare the underground workings for exploration and remnant mining.
The shift in focus also entailed a 39% reduction in its current workforce.
Before the contractor downed tools, the planned development shutdown was progressing slightly ahead of schedule, but would now be slightly delayed until replacement workers had been selected.
This transition-mining plan included the migration from contract miners at Vezza to in-house mining crews to reopen the Sleeping Giant mine.
The company had already started an internal hiring process for underground miners to form core crews for the Sleeping Giant reopening.
“While overall industry pressures are up, we remain confident and are committed to our short-term plan to ramp up the Sleeping Giant mine as the Vezza project is ramped down to care and maintenance,” Maudore said in a statement on Wednesday.