First Mining Gold expects final EA for Springpole next Spring

sheet and the plant sizing and everything else is basically done to feasibility levels. So, we’re well advanced on that front.”

Gold.

The company expects to submit a final EA to the Ontario government next Spring with an eye on 2025 being a watershed year.

Springpole is regarded as one of the largest undeveloped open pit gold deposits in the country. First Mining acquired the project in 2016 and they’ve been in the environmental assessment process since 2018.

Which is important because again, the work that we have done really positions Springpole pretty. “And it’s really expensive and it’s really complicated,” said CEO Dan Wilton in a recent promotional video.

“Springpole is located in a great jurisdiction,” said Wilton. “It’s about 100 kilometers east of Red Lake close to the Manitoba border. There are forestry roads that go on to our mineral tenure, about 18 kilometers from the project. There are power lines, about 30 kilometers away, and then a bigger, almost brand new 230kv line. I think it’s a great deal. It represents a really good opportunity to drive infrastructure into a region of Northwestern Ontario that can open up a lot of other op-

It’s 4.6 million ounces of measured and indicated gold. It’s another 24 million ounces M&I resource of silver. And the silver recovers in this project, so it’s a helpful by-product,” he added.

The company is planning a large open pit with an average grade about one gram gold and five grams silver for an 11 year of mine life –capable of producing in excess of 300,000 ounces a year.

“This is big enough to be meaningful to the biggest mining companies in the world. And in terms of development process, we had a prefeasibility study done early in 2021, which showed net present value of, at $1,600 gold price, just shy of a billion dollars US on 718 million US of capital cost,” said Wilton.

Since 2021, the company has been moving the project through the feasibility study process and they are 90% complete.

“Including, understanding feasibility level, metallurgical variability testing, hydrogeology, hydrology, waste rock characterization, geochemistry, tailings dam structures and tailings deposition strategy, the mine plant and the process flow

Wilton says the other real driver on timeframe is the environmental assessment process. “At Springpole, we submitted and published a draft environmental assessment about a year ago. So that just lays it out in a comprehensive fashion, 10,000 pages, all the baseline studies and work that we’ve been doing at this project really since 2010, the summary of those and then the game plan is to be able to build the mine with no long-term adverse impacts to the environment.”

One of the things about Springpole, the deposit sits under the Bay of the Lake. “And so the development plan involves building less than a kilometer of dikes, dewatering the lake and having an open pit mining project. That for a lot of people has taken a lot of getting their heads around. It’s been done a number of times before in Canada. What we are facing from a technical perspective is a lot less challenging than a lot of the mines in the Northwest Territories, for example.”

Wilton says there’s nothing at Springpole that’s a fatal flaw of the project. “We’re excited really starting to write up that final EA to submit that about a year from now. And ultimately, targeting that approval in 2025.”