A Sudbury junior miner is making preparations to extract a large bulk sample at an advanced gold project in northwestern Quebec.
Wallbridge Mining announced that it has received a Certificate of Non-Liability from the Government of Quebec for the dewatering of the pit and ramp at its Fenelon Gold Project, and to take a 35,000-tonne bulk sample at the property, located 75 kilometres north of Mattagami.
The company said this allows them to proceed with an application for a certificate of authorization from the regional authority responsible for issuing permits.
This review process is underway and typically takes 60 to 75 days.
After acquiring the old mine property last October, Wallbridge announced a positive prefeasibility study at Fenelon last February.
Located in the gold-rich Abitibi region, it’s roughly on the same latitude – and just over the Quebec border – from the Detour Lake open-pit mine in northeastern Ontario.
The Fenelon property contains an existing 500-metre ramp and more than a kilometre of underground development.
Wallbridge’s corporate literature is billing the project as Quebec’s “next gold producer.”
Fenelon has a measured and indicated resource of 38,000 ounces at 12.97 grams per tonne (g/t), and proven and probable reserve of 29,000 ounces at 9.30 g/t.
An exploration drilling program is underway to expand the resource and the company believes Fenelon has major upside.
Wallbridge has set an exploration target of between 250,000 and 400,000 ounces.
"We are very pleased to have met this significant milestone and hope to have our permit to start dewatering the pit and the ramp sometime in the early fall of this year," said Wallbridge president-CEO Marz Kord in an Aug. 15 news release.
"Once underground, we will not only extract the required tonnage to increase our understanding of the Fenelon Gold deposit but more importantly we will be able to explore by underground diamond drilling to determine the size potential of the deposit to depth and along strike.”
A surface drilling program has yielded visible gold in 8 of 14 holes.
Wallbridge also has a stable of nickel, copper, and PGM projects in Sudbury basin, built around its high-grade Parkin project.
