The PureGold mine in Red Lake, Ontario, has a new mine general manager, based in Madsen, to take the operation through its next phase of growth. The company announced on Wednesday that director Maryse Bélanger has stepped into the role to oversee the day-to-day operations of the mine.

Bélanger is a senior mining executive and previously served as president and CEO of Augusta Gold and president and COO of Atlantic Gold. She also served as the CEO and MD of Mirabela Nickel and was previously also a senior executive at Goldcorp.

“Maryse's extensive global experience both as a corporate executive and a mine operator, with a focus on streamlining organizations and driving cost performance, will be a great asset to PureGold. Her decades of hands-on global mining experience and a progressive approach to mining placing a high priority on safety, sustainability, and accountability, is an excellent addition to the PureGold team,” commented president and CEO Darin Labrenz.

Meanwhile, Labrenz reported that the third quarter was a strong operational one for the PureGold mine, with quarter-on-quarter improvements in ore production, underground development rates and mill head grades.

“We expect mill throughput and mill head grades to continue trending positively through the end of 2021 and into 2022 as ongoing accelerated development and definition drilling programmes continue to open up access and build inventory in both the East Ramp and Main Ramp areas of the mine. Underground drilling continues to confirm the high-grade nature of this deposit and we are excited by what lies ahead,” he said.

For the first three quarters of 2021, accelerated ramp development and definition drilling have been successful in opening up the underground mine which, in turn, has driven steady improvements in throughput and grade year-to-date.

Pure Gold said that it was confident that these programmes would continue to deliver steady improvements going forward, but that the forecastepace of ramp-up had been revised based on trends observed to date.

As such, the company said it was targeting a production rate of about 600 t/d to 700 t/d at an average head grade of 5.5 g/t to 6.5 g/t gold for the fourth quarter of 2021 and that it expected to continue ramping up both throughput and mill head grade toward the mine's full capacity by the end of the first quarter 2022. The company now expected to sustain 1 000 t/d by mid-2022, rather than the end of 2021 as was previously forecast.