A Toronto junior miner believes there’s a grab bag of minerals on its exploration property in the Sudbury-Wanapitei area, east of Sudbury.
MacDonald Mines Exploration has started the first phase of a 1,500-2,000-metre diamond drilling program on its SPJ IOCG property to explore zones of high-grade gold and to better understand the area’s overall geological structure.
The company said there’s been a “paradigm shift” in thinking about the rocks around Wanapitei that’s led to the area being poorly understood and under-explored.
The Geological Survey of Canada has recently identified the area as a promising district for iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) exploration.
These systems can produce large volumes of low to medium-grade gold, copper and possibly cobalt. MacDonald Mines said these kinds of deposits can be highly profitable mines.
The company has a 10,647-hectare land package in three townships, 40 kilometres east of the city. It hosts two former mines, including the former Scadding Mine, which produced 914 kilograms of gold, grading 7.2 grams per tonne, when it operated between 1984 and 1990.
“We believe we are in an under-explored IOCG district that is now being recognized by the academic community,” said MacDonald Mines president-CEO Quentin Yarie in a June 27 news release.
“Historic drilling indicates that sizeable gold zones with high-grade mineralization, open along strike and depth, exists in the deposit but that the challenging and complex geology classically associated with IOCG deposits hindered previous exploration.”
Leading their technical team is Jean-Francois Montreuil, an expert on IOCG exploration modelling, which they believe will increase their chances of exploration success.
Outside of Sudbury, MacDonald Mines has a gold property northeast of Wawa, near Alamos’ Island Gold Mine, and has a chromite, precious and base metal project in the Ring of Fire.
