(Kitco News) – The coming year will be an exciting one for the O’Brien gold mine project, with major advances on the business side and on the resource itself, according to Matt Manson, President and CEO of Radisson Mining Resources.
Manson sat down with Kitco Mining at Xplor 2024 in Montreal. He said that the drilling program is showing potential for a much larger gold resource at the O’Brien site, while the development of the mine is also reaching significant milestones.
“We see this as an exploration story,” he said. “The drilling is going very well. We see upwards of three million ounces here eventually, that's the trajectory we're on. But at the stage we're at now, we can also start thinking about it as a development story as well, and we think there's a clever way to do the development without it becoming a big standalone project.”
Manson said that with so many existing mills in close proximity to O’Brien, Radisson is confident that they’ll be able to find the right fit. “The stated objective of this company is we don't want to build our own mill,” he said. “We don't see the reason for a new mill here, a new tailings facility, we see it as going to one of these other existing mills.”
Manson said that of the five strong candidates, the IAMGOLD mill, which is now being used to process Westwood ore, looks to be the most likely.
“That's a natural candidate for us,” he said. “IAMGOLD's stated objective is to find additional supplies of ore for that mill. It's got about a 3,000-ton-a-day capacity. Westwood's doing about 1,000 tons a day into it profitably, but there's capacity there. And so here we are, 15 minutes down the highway, with a thousand tons a day potentially of high-grade ore coming from O’Brien. You put all that together and you've got a pretty good operation there. So that's a natural one for us to look at.”
Radisson and IAMGOLD have recently announced a Memorandum of Agreement to explore the viability of the mill for processing O’Brien ore.
“The MOU consistent with what IAMGOLD have said publicly they're trying to achieve, and consistent with what we've said,” Manson said. “The first step is to do an MOU under which we're doing the technical evaluation of our ore going through their mill and into their tailings facility. And that's nontrivial. And then what is the tailings deposition strategy as well, which is another nontrivial thing.”
“The two teams, the Radisson team, we're working with Ausenco on this, and the IAMGOLD team are working well together,” he added. “That's going ahead, and going well.”
Manson said they’re not getting ahead of themselves, but if they find the right fit with an existing mill, the project's economics become very interesting.
“If O’Brien is just the underground mine, minimal surface facilities, we don't need a camp, we don't need a major equipment facility because we're so close to town, no mill, no major earthworks, no infrastructure, we're right beside the highway, the harbor's right there,” he said. “With these grades, the type of resource we see, the margin we can get on that type of ore, especially in this gold market, it's a fantastic proposition. This is why we're all here.”
Coverage of Xplor 2024 was sponsored by Radisson Mining Resources.
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