The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2024 - January 15, 2025
With the addition of Manh Choh ore, more than 149,000 oz of gold was poured at Fort Knox during the third quarter of 2024.
The Kinross Alaska mill has been modified to process the much higher-grade ore being delivered from Manh Choh.
Kinross Gold CEO Paul Rollinson addresses crowd gathered to celebrate pouring of the first gold bar from Manh Choh.
The July 8 pouring of the first gold bar from the Manh Choh Mine marked a new phase of roughly half-a-million-ounce-per-year gold production at Kinross Gold Corp.'s iconic Fort Knox Mine in Alaska.
This new chapter for Fort Knox is the product of the global mining company's "Kinross Alaska" strategy – an initiative launched in 2020 to enhance gold production in Alaska by supplementing the primarily heap leach-grade ore mined from the Fort Knox property with higher-grade mill feedstock from satellite deposits within a roughly 300-mile radius of the mine about 20 miles north of Fairbanks.
Manh Choh, a high-grade gold project on lands owned by the Alaska Native Village of Tetlin about 240 miles southeast of Fort Knox, is the first satellite mine to feed high-grade ore into the rechristened Kinross Alaka mill.
Developed and operated under a joint venture between Kinross (70%) and Contango ORE Inc. (30%), Manh Choh is currently expected to deliver enough ore to the Kinross Alaska mill to produce roughly 1 million gold-equivalent oz, which includes the value of both the gold and silver recovered, over an initial 4.5 years of mining.
This initial mine plan is based on 3.9 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 7.88 g/t (998,000 oz) gold and 13.6 g/t (1.7 million oz) silver.
This is an order of magnitude higher grade than the mill ore currently being mined on the Fort Knox property.
The Kinross Alaska mill has been modified to process the much higher-grade ore being delivered from Manh Choh.
Over the first three months of processing higher-grade Manh Choh ore, the total output at Fort Knox more than doubled to 149,093 oz of gold – nearly 120,000 attributable to Kinross and 29,950 going to Contango for its 30% share of gold and silver recovered from the two batches of Manh Choh ore processed during the quarter.
"In Alaska, production of 120,000 ounces was higher compared to the prior quarter, a record mill grade and recovery as production commenced from the higher grade Manh Choh during the quarter," said Kinross Gold COO Claude Schimper.
With Manh Choh boosting gold output at Fort Knox into the range of 500,000 oz/yr, Kinross is looking for additional high-grade ore to feed its Alaska mill after the 4.5 years of mineral reserves are gone. This includes looking to expand the reserves at Manh Choh.
Toward this goal, the joint venture budgeted $4.7 million to test targets in the immediate Manh Choh mining area and carry out exploration across the 675,000-acred land package leased from the Tetlin Tribe.
The 2024 exploration at Manh Choh included drilling to test near-mine structural targets, as well as geophysical targets connected to the areas of known mineralization.
One target tested last year was Middle Earth, an intriguing area between the North and South pits at Manh Choh. Mapping the skarn mineralization in the pits being mined provides a clearer picture of a potential connection between the two deposits that host the current resource.
Other holes tested geophysical targets south of the current mining area.
Geologists also continued an extensive sampling program across the wider property. This includes reconnaissance soil sampling in the southern half of the Manh Choh property, along with grid-based sampling of the most compelling of the 12 zones identified across this vastly underexplored area.
While looking to expand the resources and reserves at Manh Choh, Kinross continues to look for other sources of high-grade feedstock for the mill at Fort Knox.
One such source of ore could be at Contango's Lucky Shot project about 230 miles south of Fort Knox.
Lucky Shot hosts 226,963 metric tons of indicated resource averaging 14.5 g/t (105,620 oz) gold and 82,058 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 9.5 g/t (25,110 oz) gold.
Contango plans to expand this high-grade deposit to around 400,000 oz of gold with close-spaced underground drilling from upgraded and expanded tunnels at the historic mine.
Kinross Gold CEO Paul Rollinson addresses crowd gathered to celebrate pouring of the first gold bar from Manh Choh.
Not only is the high-grade gold mineralization at Lucky Shot within Kinross Alaska's economic radius, but it is also only about 30 road miles from the Alaska Railroad, which could efficiently deliver ore within about 25 miles of the mill.
During the pouring of the first Manh Choh gold bar, Kinross Gold CEO Paul Rollinson hinted at the potential for future partnerships with Contango.
"Hopefully, this is just the beginning of lots more that we can do together," he said to Contango Ore President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse during the July 8 gathering at the Fort Knox mine.
Whether it is through growth at Manh Choh, high-grade ore from Lucky Shot, or partnerships on other projects along road, rail, or rivers within 300 miles of Fort Knox, Rollinson indicated that Kinross will endeavor to keep its Kinross Alaska in play well into the future.
"We are an international company and work in many different countries, and I can honestly say Alaska is a world-class mining jurisdiction," he said.
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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