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Expect some new signage on the Hornepayne highway.outside of the mothballed Sugar Zone Mine, north of White River.
Vault Minerals will be the new name on the marquee following the final June merger of two Australian gold companies, Silver Lake Resources and Red 5. The name change becomes official pending shareholder approval Sept. 25.
In a Red 5 news release, the board of directors decided at the end of August that a change of name was on order to change the market’s perception of the new company.
The name, Vault, was picked because a vault “is a secure store of value that is built to last.” The board also like that the chemical symbol for gold — Au — is in the name. Once shareholders sign off on that, the company will trade on the Australian Stock Exchange under the symbol “VAU.”
The $2.2-billion Australian ($1.9 billion Canadian) deal, first announced in February, included a takeover of the Sugar Zone mine, 30 kilometres north of White River.
Silver Lake Resources had originally plucked the Sugar Zone mine in early 2022 from the CCAA sales process when Harte Gold entered creditor protection December 2021. Harte Gold first put the mine into production in 2019.
Silver Lake decided in the summer of 2023 to suspend mining to come up and totally re-evaluate the whole operation by coming up with an improved mine plan and to put ample gold resources in place. That meant commencing a 93,000-metre drill program to gain a better understanding of the ore body in and around the mine.
That drill program wrapped up in June. The results will be fed into a new mineral resources model with internal studies being done to consider various production scenarios of a mining rate between 800 to 1,000 tonnes per day.
Sugar Zone is described in company documents as being in a “state of operational readiness.” However, no date was provided on when the mine will restart.
To keep things in a ready state, Red 5 has budgeted $33 million to $35 million for its 2025 fiscal year. The spending is earmarked staffing and ongoing mine care and maintenance.
The company continues to prioritize drilling to build up ounces in the gold base for when production resumes, mostly in more well-known mining and mineralized areas of the Sugar Main and Middle Zones. Several new ideas were identified for follow-up drilling in 2025, particularly a nearby emerging area called the Sugar South Zone.
In its series of news releases, Red 5 expresses confidence that the results seen so far show potential to widen and deepen the gold resource next to the current Sugar Main Zone.
Expect to see news flow in the coming months from more regional exploration drilling, the company said, in mapping and prospecting that is underway on the company’s significant 81,000-hectare land holding in a geologically significant area called the Dayohessarah greenstone belt.
