The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - February 20, 2024
Aerial view of the camp and mill building at Ascot's Premier gold-silver mine in Northern BC.
With the price of gold holding steady above $2,000 per ounce, Ascot Resources Ltd. is wrapping up the development of its Premier Mine and expects to pour the first gold at this newest iteration of the historic Northern British Columbia operation in April.
"With project construction nearing completion and early commissioning underway, we eagerly anticipate progressing to the production and operations phase at the Premier Gold Mine," said Ascot Resources President and CEO Derek White.
Lying about 15 kilometers (nine miles) north of Stewart, B.C., Ascot's Premier gold project is home to a past-producing gold mine that last operated in the 1990s.
With much of the major infrastructure from this historical operation in place – mill, crushing and grinding circuits, tailings storage area, and hydroelectric grid power access – Ascot has the framework from which to build a new-era gold mine at Premier.
A feasibility study completed in 2020 detailed plans to develop four underground mines – Big Missouri, Premier, Silver Coin, and Red Mountain – that will feed ore to the upgraded mill at Premier. At 2,500 metric tons per day, this operation is expected to produce roughly 1.1 million ounces of gold and 3 million oz of silver over the first eight years of mining.
This new era of Premier mining is based on 3.63 million metric tons of probable reserves averaging 5.45 grams per metric ton (637,000 oz) gold and 19.1 g/t (2.23 million oz) silver within the Silver Coin, Big Missouri, and Premier deposits; plus 2.55 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 6.52 g/t (534,000 oz) gold and 20.6 g/t (1.69 million oz) silver at Red Mountain, which is on a separate property about 20 kilometers (12 miles) the southeast.
As of the end of January, Ascot was 90% complete with the construction of this operation and is currently wrapping up that work in preparation for the first ore to be delivered to the mill in March and the first gold from the new era Premier Mine in April.
Early last year, Ascot closed a C$200 million (US$147 million) financing package to complete the work needed to get the Premier Mine into production.
Going into 2024, however, the company was down to C$27 million (US$20 million) in the bank, shy of the estimated C$47 million (US$35 million) to get to the first cash-generating gold pour at Premier.
To ensure it has plenty of cash to finish the work and get well into the status of gold producer, Ascot closed a US$50 million (C$67.6 million) financing with Sprott Resource Streaming and Royalty Corp. and Nebari Natural Resources Credit Fund II; and raised an additional C$29 million (US$21.4 million) through a bought deal financing involving the issuance of 65.34 million Ascot shares at C44 cents per share.
The company believes that the C$96.6 million (US$71.4 million) raised with these financings will provide plenty of cash to finish construction, progress through commissioning and ramp-up to commercial production, and reach nameplate capacity at the Premier Gold Mine.
Based on the expected life-of-mine production average, once at nameplate capacity, Premier will be pouring roughly 375 oz of gold and more than 1,000 oz of silver per day.
"With the gold price still trading near US$2,000 per ounce, this is an opportune time for us to become Canada's next gold producer," said White.
Visible gold in a quartz vein observed in the wall while developing an underground ore drive at Big Missouri, which is delivering the first ore to be fed into the mill at Premier.
The push to get Premier to the first gold pour has not come at the expense of safety. As of the end of 2023, workers at the gold mine development project had logged 1.14 million hours without a lost time incident.
"The project also accomplished an impressive safety milestone having surpassed one million hours without a lost time incident, along with another quarterly reduction in total recordable incident frequency," said White.
Total recordable incidents can be anything from a dent in the bumper of a truck to a finger cut that needs a Band-Aid or a near miss that deserves reporting and follow-up. The recordable incident rate at Premier dropped from an already impressive rate of 0.69 per 100 full-time employees to 0.52 per 100 full-time employees.
This is particularly impressive for a mine's development stage, which involves a lot of heavy equipment moving and installation, as well as onboarding new staff.
Ascot says it will continue to work on proactive safety training and measures to reduce overall incidents on site, especially with the pending transition from construction to operations.
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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