Wesdome looks to increase Mineral Reserves

Wesdome Mines is planning to turn 2023 into a year of successes.

In January 2023 long-time President and CEO, Duncan Middlemiss announced his retirement. This year Wesdome is searching for a replacement for Duncan Middlemiss. In January Wesdome announced board chair Warwick Morley-Jepson will be replacing Duncan Middlemiss on an interim basis. An executive search firm will find a successor. Middlemiss has agreed to stay in an advisory capacity on a temporary basis.

A bright spot for Wesdome last year was the Kiena Mine in Val d’Or, Quebec began commercial production in November, 2022.

Duncan was thanked for his leadership over the last six-and-half years and for guiding Kiena into production during the pandemic.

The company also plans to bolster their mineral reserves with a focused drilling program at Kiena and at their Eagle River gold mine in Ontario.

“With an existing large resource base, efforts in 2023 will focus on converting a portion of these resources to reserves. Additionally, we have a number of recently discovered zones and exploration targets at both projects,” Wesdome stated in a news release.

Wesdome Gold Mines updated mineral resource and reserve estimates for its two high-grade underground assets: the 100% owned Kiena mine complex in Val d’Or, Quebec, and the Eagle River mine near Wawa, Ontario.

Plans for improving the company’s performance in 2023 started with the announcement in March for 137,000 metres of drilling with a focus on expanding mineral reserves and resources. The drilling program will also further delineate new discoveries made at the Kiena Mine, including the south limb of the A Zone and several adjacent hanging wall zones which remain outside of mineral reserves. An exploration ramp is specifically budgeted to follow-up and expand on the nearsurface Presqu’île Zone. Kiena ramp development has continued ahead of budget, with completion of the ramp to the 129 m-level scheduled by year end. Completion of this ramp segment will provide access to the high grade Kiena Deep A Zone, which is associated with areas with the highest ounces per vertical metre located within the zone.

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To the west of Eagle River, the company believes there is potential for the delineation of a parallel Falcon structure and further to the East down dip extension of the high grade 300 Zone that could meaningfully enhance future operational flexibility of the asset. With an existing large resource base, efforts in 2023 will focus on converting a portion of these resources to reserves. Additionally, we have several recently discovered zones and exploration targets at both projects. As of December 31, 2022, the Toronto-based gold miner’s combined proven and probable mineral reserves totalled 2.4 million tonnes grading 12.9 grams per tonne gold, for 1 million ounces of contained gold. This represents a 17% decrease in ounces from a year ago (2.9 million tonnes at 12.6 g/t gold). Its combined measured and indicated mineral resources (exclusive of reserves) were 350,000 gold ounces (1.4 million tonnes grading 7.7 g/t gold), while the combined inferred mineral resources were 1.1 million ounces (6.4 million tonnes grading 5.2 g/t gold). Both resource categories were slightly higher than that of year-end 2021.

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According to Wesdome, the reserves and resource estimates at both sites reflect higher cut-off grades and a higher allocation towards definition and infill drilling (including 25,000 metres in the Falcon Zone at Eagle River). They also reflect a more stringent and robust approach to reconciliation, 3D modeling and resource classification at both properties.