TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Wallbridge Mining Company has this week entered into a binding letter of intent to acquire the Fenelon gold property from Balmoral Resources for C$3.6-million.
The Fenelon mine property was an advanced-stage project with near-term production potential, as well as drill intersections suggesting exploration potential for resource expansion.
The project was located in West-Central Quebec, within the same Sunday Lake deformation zone that hosted the 16.4-million-ounce Detour gold mine, in Ontario, as well as the Martiniere gold project, currently being explored by Balmoral.
Wallbridge advised that the 1 052 ha Fenelon project contained the Discovery Zone gold deposit that was discovered in 1994. A total of over 50 000 m of drilling had been completed on the deposit, which had also seen two bulk samples mined and processed.
In 2001, 13 835 t of bulk sample mined from a small openpit at the Discovery Zone was test milled at the Camflo mill, in Malartic, and returned 4 245 oz of gold giving a reconciled grade of 9.84 g/t gold using a calculated recovery of 97%.
A second bulk sample, mined from underground and also milled at Camflo comprised 8 169 t and returned 2 596 oz of gold, giving a reconciled grade of 10.7 g/t gold. Wallbridge noted that the openpit and underground workings were currently flooded, with dewatering expected to take six to eight weeks after all permits had been put in place.
“We look forward to rapidly moving this project forward following completion of the transaction. We are very encouraged by the grades that were mined during both the surface and underground bulk sampling campaigns and by the exploration potential in the immediate vicinity of the existing underground workings,” stated Wallbridge president Marz Kord.
The company advised that financing for the project had been initiated and would proceed over the next several weeks, with the aim of signing a purchase agreement within 60 days from the letter of intent. The financing would comprise supplier financing, equity and debt, with the objective of optimising potential project returns.
Wallbridge had most recently completed mining of the polymetallic Broken Hammer copper/platinum group metals openpit project, in Ontario, last year.