Exploration drilling at the Kiena Mine Complex, in Val d’Or, Quebec, continues to expand high-grade zones and has also yielded the discovery of a new zone, Toronto-headquartered Wesdome Gold Mines reported on Wednesday.
Since the completion of the prefeasibility study (PFS) for Kiena in 2021, underground drilling has been focused on the exploration proximal to the Deep A Zones. As part of this exploration focus, early success discovered the Footwall Zones last year and drilling continues to expand these zones down plunge.
Most recently, underground exploration drilling at the Kiena Deep A Zones area has discovered a new mineralised interval, located 100 m below the known limit of A Zone resource. Wesdome said additional drilling would be needed to link this new mineralisation to the existing lenses.
Drilling has discovered the lateral extension of the A Zone along the South limb of the fold, an area that remains open along strike and down dip.
The discovery of a South limb could “significantly add” to the resource base, president and CEO Duncan Middlemiss said in a statement.
“Just as the Footwall Zone discovery, this lateral extension of the A Zone will increase the number of ounces per vertical metre and have the potential to provide additional working faces during mining. All in all, this can positively impact project economics as the same underground infrastructure used to access the A Zone can be leveraged to mine these additional zones on a low unit cost basis,” he said.
Wesdome is spending aggressively on exploration at Kiena, with $17.7-million earmarked for 2022, including about 50 000 m of underground drilling and 30 000 m of surface drilling.
“It is evident that as we continue to explore and collect new information, we are able to discover traps for gold mineralization outside of the known zones, thereby demonstrating the prospectivity of this area and the entire property,” said Middlemiss.
Wesdome in May last year announced the restart of Kiena, having been under care and maintenance since 2013. The PFS upon which the restart decision was based, calculated that the mine would produce an average of 84 000 oz/y at an all-in sustaining cost of $676/oz.