The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
First quarter gold output jumps 55% at Victoria's Yukon mine North of 60 Mining News – April 7, 2023
Victoria Gold stacked 2.1 million metric tons of ore averaging 0.86 g/t gold on the Eagle Mine heap leach pad during the first quarter, which is expected to jump-start 2023 gold production at this Yukon operation.
Victoria Gold Corp. April 5 announced that it produced 37,619 ounces of gold during the first quarter of 2023 operations at its Eagle Mine in the Yukon, a nearly 55% increase over the 24,358 oz produced during the first three months of last year.
"This was the best Q1 performance for the Eagle Gold Mine since operations commenced with strong gold production and ore tonnage stacked on the heap leach pad," said Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell.
Since pouring the first bar of gold in the fall of 2019, Victoria has curtailed stacking ore on the heap leach pad at Eagle during the first three months of each year due to the cold weather in the Yukon.
As part of its new operations plan, the company stacked ore on the heap leach pad during the first quarter of this year, demonstrating that year-round ore stacking is both technically feasible and operationally achievable.
As a result, 2.1 million metric tons of ore were stacked on the heap leach pad during the first quarter, a 133% increase over the 900,000 metric tons stacked during the first three months of 2022. The ore stacked on the pad during the first quarter of this year averaged 0.86 grams per metric ton, significantly higher than the 0.72 g/t gold ore stacked on the pad during the same period of 2022.
"During the first quarter, we successfully demonstrated the feasibility of year-round stacking on the heap leach pad," McConnell added.
The ability to stack ore during the coldest winter months does not mean that gold production will not dip during the winter.
Gold recoveries at heap leach systems in northern climates, such as Eagle and Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine in Alaska, taper off during the winter due to the cold temperatures affecting gold recoveries.
This year's first-quarter production was also impacted by lower-than-planned ore stacked on the heap leach pad due to roughly three weeks of downtime as a result of the failure of a belt on the overland conveyor that transports ore for the heap leach pad.
With the highest-ever, first-quarter gold production and more higher-grade ore stacked on the heap leach pad at the onset of 2023, the Eagle Mine is positioned for its most productive year so far.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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