Gold miner Yamana Gold has completed the acquisition of the Wasamac property and Camflo property and mill, solidifying its position in Quebec’s Abitibi region.

The company acquired the assets through the acquisition of Monarch Gold, which has spun out its other mineral assets in the newly formed Monarch Mining.

Yamana has also unveiled its initial plans for Wasamac, which is located about 15 km from Rouyn-Noranda and about 100 km from the company’s 50%-owned Canadian Malartic mine.

The company states that the geological characteristics of the Wasamac orebody suggest it holds the potential to be an underground mine with the potential to achieve the same scale, grade, production and costs as the Jacobina mine in Brazil, and it possesses many parallels to the underground project at Canadian Malartic.

The project has existing proven and probable mineral reserves of 1.8-million ounces of gold at 2.56 g/t.

“There remains excellent potential for significant future exploration success and mineral resource conversion, with the deposit remaining open at depth and along strike,” Yamana notes.

Building off the work completed to date, Yamana plans to commence an exploration and infill drilling campaign and other studies to refine and expand upon the potential of Wasamac and its development alternatives.

The company also plans to open a regional office in the coming months to support community engagement.

Under the terms of the arrangement, each former holder of Monarch shares received 0.0376 of a Yamana share, C$0.192 in cash from Yamana; and 0.2 of a share of Monarch Mining.

In aggregate, Yamana issued 11 608 195 Yamana shares and about C$59.3-million in cash under the arrangement. Upon closing, existing Yamana shareholders and former Monarch shareholders own about 98.8% and 1.2% of the issued and outstanding Yamana shares, respectively.

Meanwhile, Monarch's shares would be delisted from the TSX at the beginning of next week and the newly formed Monarch Mining will start trading on the stock exchange. Monarch Mining will own the Beaufor, Croinor Gold, McKenzie Break and Swanson mineral properties.