Geotech_Earlug_2015_VTEM_Colour3.pdf 1 2015-09-25 9:59:47 AM
VTEM™ ZTEM™ Gravity Magnetics Radiometrics Data Processing Interpretation 905 841 5004 | geotech.ca
Barkerville Gold Mines Upgrading gold resource at Cow Mountain / 3
Integra gold
Pilot Gold
Takes $6M stake in Eastmain / 5
New CEO Everett lured by Goldstrike / 11
APRIL 25–MAY 1, 2016 / VOL. 102 ISSUE 12 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
Harte Gold sends first ore to Barrick's Hemlo mill Ontario gold
| Sugar deposit should be profitable, CEO Stephen Roman says
Cordoba, HPX move San Matias forward Colombia
| Friedland holds 37% of Cordoba By Trish Saywell tsaywell@northernminer.com
W
hen Mario Stifano found himself alone in an elevator with mine-finder Robert Friedland at the end of a long day of presentations at the BMO Conference, the stars just seemed to align. “It was around 4:30 p.m., and usually the elevators at the conference are packed around that time, but there he was — it was just him and I,” Stifano, the president and CEO of junior explorer Cordoba Minerals (TSXV: CDB), recalls of the chance encounter in February 2014. “I introduced myself, told him I loved his speeches, and that I wanted to tell him about our project, where airborne surveys seemed to show similarities with his Oyu Tolgoi project. I had 30 seconds to pitch him.” See Cordoba / 13
A truck loaded with development ore from Harte Gold’s Sugar gold deposit in northern Ontario. Harte Gold PM40069240
By Trish Saywell tsaywell@northernminer.com
H
arte Gold (TSX: HRT; US-OTC: HRTFF) has shipped the first ore from a 70,000-tonne, bulk-sample mining program to Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: ABX) Hemlo mill on Lake Superior's North Shore. The bulk-sample program at Harte’s Sugar deposit in Ontario could produce 24,000 oz. gold this year. Technica, a Sudbur y-based contract miner, has been hired to mine the bulk sample. The fully permitted bulk-sample phase and the relatively quick path to production has won over analyst Christopher Ecclestone of Hallgarten & Co. “Production remains king, and long lead times are death to a goldmining story,” the London-based analyst writes in a research note, marking the start of his coverage of the Toronto-based junior.
“You have to be … a little inventive, so that you can make deals like we did with Barrick to toll mill and keep capex down.” Stephen Roman Chairman, president and CEO, Harte Gold
“The trend towards small-scale mining — or as we tend to call it, ‘right-sized’ mining — seems to be gaining traction,” the Londonbased analyst says. “Bankers don’t like it because it means smaller financings and less fees, and consultants absolutely hate it, because it means less mindless drilling, wheel-spinning and production of useless tomes of bankable and definitive feasibility study drivel. The group that does like it includes retail investors and us, while institutional investors find that, quite literally, they cannot get enough of these companies.” The 70,000-tonne, bulk-sample program will cost $20 million and mine the Sugar zone — one
of four zones the company has identified at the project — 60 km east of the Hemlo area gold mines and 25 km northeast of White River. The Sugar zone is a high-grade, 500,000 oz. gold deposit that is open at depth and on strike, where mineralization extends to a 1,000-metre vertical depth. Drilling last year extended the strike length at Sugar by 300 metres to 1,100 metres, and found a parallel mineralized zone that Harte is calling the “Footwall” zone. Stephen Roman, Harte’s chairman, president and CEO, says that after the bulk-sample mining program, the company will have all the information it needs to make a commercial production
decision. “This is in fact our feasibility study,” he says, which will provide information on mining methods, average grades, average thicknesses, costs and so forth. Roman notes that the $20-million cost of the bulk-sample program is dramatically lower than the $118 million in initial capex estimated in a 2012 preliminary economic assessment (PEA). This is because the PEA didn’t envision contract mining the deposit or toll milling, and all the savings on equipment and other material. Even if the company builds its own mill, Roman says, Harte has received three estimates that range from $10 million to $15 million for a mill, bringing total capex up to $45 million to get the project into the second phase, or commercial production. If the company brings its own power to site, this would add several million dollars. Roman notes that the company has already started permitting for commercial production, which he expects will take 12 to 18 months. See Harte / 2
Carbon Pricing: MAC offers guidElines / 4
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