Monarch Gold announces drilling results

The Beaufor Mine initially began commercial production in the early 1930’s and over the years has produced over 1.1 million oz of gold. The mine is currently on care and maintenance, which has given Monarch an opportunity to complete a 3D compilation and a programme to identify, define and drill targets throughout the mine area. In June 2020, the corporation initiated a 42 500 m diamond drilling programme to test two types of targets: the areas around historical high-grade intersections near the existing underground infrastructure, and isolated resource blocks, which are typically defined by a single drill intersection. These ‘near-mine’ targets can be tested from the existing underground workings, generally by holes less than 200 m long. Currently, 275 holes are being drilled at 25 m centres, and if positive results are received, additional holes will be drilled to allow the zones in question to be converted into reserves and included in a future mine plan.

The drilling programme is being overseen by Christian Tessier, P. Geo., hired in July as Monarch’s Geology Superintendent for the Beaufor Mine project. He has over 10 years of experience as a mine geologist and was Senior Mine Geologist at the Canadian Malartic mine, where he worked for the last 9 years. Prior to that, he worked for Richmont Mines for 2 years, where he was in charge of grade control, face mapping, long-hole stope design and diamond drill hole planning for Richmont’s Island Gold Mine. Tessier has a B.Sc. in Resource Geology from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Assay results have been received for the first 21 holes, representing just 3% of the planned metres of drilling. Seven holes intersected anomalous gold mineralisation, which is considered good given the characteristic nuggety-style gold distribution. The best intersections are shown in the table below. Several of the holes have multiple intersections due to the stacked nature of the mineralisation. The intersection widths reported are core lengths and high-grade intersections have not been capped, as the vein interpretation and statistics have not been finalised for the zones.

“The Beaufor property started production over 87 years ago and has yet to reveal all of its gold potential,” said Jean-Marc Lacoste, President and CEO of Monarch. “We plan to identify it with the help of Christian Tessier, our new senior geologist, who has solid underground drilling experience with Canadian Malartic and at Richmont’s Island Gold Mine, where he started his career. These new high-grade intersections demonstrate that significant veins and vein extensions still exist. Our ultimate goal is to restart gold production at the Beaufor Mine within 12 to 18 months to take advantage of the very favourable gold market.”

Monarch has also been taking advantage of the care and maintenance period at Beaufor to test a new technology, a prototype teleoperation system designed by Meglab, on one of Beaufor’s mine Caterpillar shuttle loaders.

“Monarch is always open to testing new technologies that could eventually help us explore and produce more efficiently, at the lowest possible cost,” commented Lacoste. “We have achieved outstanding results with Meglab’s technology in the past few months, and we think it could prove very useful once operations resume at the mine.”

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/exploration-development/01102020/monarch-gold-announces-drilling-results/