Northwestern Ontario mine developer Treasury Metals has finalized the acquisition of a gold property to create a district-sized mine operation, east of Dryden.
Treasury said its addition of the Goldlund gold project from First Mining Gold, announced in June, got the thumbs-up from shareholders at the Toronto company's annual and special meeting this week.
Treasury's proposed Goliath open-pit gold property, just 20 kilometres east of Dryden, is next to the Goldlund project, which runs to the northeast toward Sioux Lookout. The combined 300-square-kilometre properties has an estimated resource base of 3.1 million ounces of gold with plenty of exploration upside.
Treasury now officially takes over exploration at Goldlund. An economic study begins on co-development opportunities involving both projects.
Want to read more stories about business in the North? Subscribe to our newsletter.
First Mining CEO Dan Wilton also takes a seat on Treasury's board of directors as First Mining becomes Treasury's largest shareholder.
Treasury CEO Greg Ferron called the completion of the acquisition a "transformational time" for shareholders that "solidifies the Goliath and Goldlund projects as among the largest undeveloped gold assets in Canada."
"The close proximity of the Goliath-Goldlund gold projects create a multi-million ounce, district-scale opportunity with significant resource growth potential," he said in an Aug. 7 release.
Prior to the acquistion, despite having all the regulatory approvals in place, Treasury hadn't released a start date to begin construction at Goliath as an open-pit operation.
With Goldlund now in the fold, Treasury raised $11.52 million last month to start a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on how to combine both projects into one large mining operation.
The PEA will dive into the details of plant and processing facilities, mining optimization, and an evaluation of potential underground and open-pit scenarios involving the two properties. Future technical studies will examine mine waste tailings storage involving developing the projects in tandem.
The results of this combined Goliath-Goldlund PEA are due by the end of this year.
This week, Treasury reported the latest results from a Goldlund drill program started last year by First Mining.
The company released the results of the final five of 48 holes from an almost 9,000-metre drill program of Goldlund's Main Zone. The goal of the drill program to outline gold mineralization in the east and west fringes of the deposit's Main Zone area.
The best hole of the bunch yielded 173.8 grams per tonne gold over 1.0 metre.
Treasury has queued up a new round of exploration for both projects this year with a 25,000-metre program involving infill and expansion drilling at Goldlund and potential expansion of Goliath's east C Zone. Environmental baseline collection is also going on at Goldlund toward obtaining permits.
