West Red Lake Gold Mines aims to put its Madsen Mine in Red Lake back into production in 2025.
The Vancouver gold company acquired the dormant northwestern Ontario underground mine and mill through a CCAA sales process last spring. The previous operator, Pure Gold Mining, halted production and placed the operation on care and maintenance in October 2022.
In a news release this week, the company said the path to production at Madsen involves 38,000 metres of drilling over a 12-month-period to better define and expand some high-grade zones. This will be the starting point for the restart.
Northwest of Madsen, the company has a second gold deposit, dubbed Rowan, with an inferred resource of 827,462 ounces. Pleased with the high-grade assays produced from a drilling program this year, the company is following up with 35,000-metre program early next year to infill and expand high-grade zones and test other promising targets in the area.
An updated mineral resource of Rowan is due out by the fourth quarter of 2024.
Baseline environmental and archaeological assessments are underway to move Rowan toward an advanced stage of exploration.
The company considers most of its 47-square-kilometre land package in the district to be underexplored. Its geology team expects more discoveries to be made with the possibility of creating a hub-and-spoke business model where ore from multiple deposits can be fed into one centralized processing mill at Madsen.
The latest prospect in the exploration pipeline is the Wedge target, located two kilometres southwest of the Madsen Mine and adjacent to the former Starratt-Olsen Mine, once a producer of 823,000 ounces. Surface exploration and drilling began in September on some high-grade zones.
West Red Lake will release a preliminary economic assessment of its entire properties by the second quarter of 2024.
“The coming year will be a very active time for the company as we lay the groundwork to execute on our vision to put the Madsen Mine back into production and continue to unlock significant value for our shareholders,” said Shane Williams, the company’s president-CEO, in a statement.
