Sixty North Gold plans to begin mining in June at its Mon Gold Property, 45 kilometres north of Yellowknife.
Production is estimated to reach around 100 tonnes of ore per day.
“It might extend into July. We’ll continue mining there as late as we can but we don’t like going too far into October,” said Sixty North president and CEO David Webb.
The start of gold mining operations will follow months of preparations during which more than 500 tonnes of mining and support equipment were transported to the Mon site by ice road.
Once mining starts in June, Sixty North will be the only company currently permitted to produce in the NWT.
“We can hire miners, dig holes, extract gold bearing rock, put it into a mill and pour gold bars. We’ve been through the regulatory process and obtained our permits. No one else can do that (right now) for gold,” Webb said.
YK gold belt still glitters
Mon sits in the Yellowknife Gold Belt that has over several decades produced more than 15 million ounces of gold from the Con, Giant and Discovery Mines.
The project is classified as a “Discovery Mine” type for its similarity to the former Discovery Mine where gold deposits were hosted in sedimentary rock. That mine, located about 85 km northeast of Yellowknife, closed in 1969.
The new Mon venture comes almost 25 years after gold was first mined at the property, when from 1989 to 1997 it produced 15,000 ounces of gold from 15,000 tonnes of ore.
Gold prices fell to a low of $287 USD to $300 per ounce, leading to the mine’s closure in 1997.
“It’s a past-producer mine. That was from two stopes that were 15-metres high,” said Webb, referring to large underground rooms excavated for ore, strong enough that they don’t cave in.
“We have drill holes underneath those stopes connecting to the same mineralization that was mined. We’ll start extracting from that vein next month.”
Since the mine’s closure in 1997, development of the current Mon site took years of planning — first figuring out how to properly develop the site then Sixty North had to get its permits in order with the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board.
Gold sales to start in 2022
According to an estimated timeline, the company aims to transport a mill and additional equipment to the mine in early 2022 on the ice road.
It will take about 60 days to assemble the device on site. It will become operational in the third quarter of 2022, when Sixty North hopes to begin selling the gold.
“Historically, you pour a gold bar on the property. You take the bar and there are about 60 different refiners in Canada that will accept that. In the past we’ve sent that to the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa. We could sell it to the mint at a spot price that day,” Webb said.
Between 16 and 20 people will work on the project, with a rotating crew of eight people on the site itself, at one time.
With its production yield of 100 tonnes of ore per day, Webb compares that to similar yields of other mines in the Yellowknife area, such as the Con Mine that started with the same number in 1938.
“Giant mine in 1944 started at 235 tonnes per day but it took them a number of years to get it up to that level. Discovery Mine started at 100 tonnes per day in 1949. What we’re doing isn’t dissimilar to what everyone else has done in Yellowknife. One-hundred tonnes equates to about 100 ounces of gold today. At today’s prices that’s about $220,000 per day. That’s over a million dollars a week. You can make a good living with eight people doing that. And you can expand.”
Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, said it’s encouraging to see a mine go into production to meet mineral resource development needs.
“Mon is a very small mining operation, and will be a good demonstration of how small projects can also form part of our economy,” he said. “There are likely more such opportunities to be found, and might be easier entries into mining for small companies.”
