(Kitco News) Greenheart Gold has started drilling Tosso Creek, its top-priority project in Suriname, and the project now has to show it can reach the scale the company needs before more money follows.
President and CEO Justin van der Toorn spoke with Kitco Mining on Sept. 23 at the 2026 Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek, a month after Greenheart began a 2,000-meter diamond drill program at the project. “Our Tosso Creek project, we want to see that multimillion-ounce potential, and I think we’re seeing that right now,” he said.
Greenheart announced the program on Aug. 20, with drilling starting at the Walaba target and Swalanga, about one kilometer to the east, to follow. Trenching returned 7.0 meters grading 4.57 grams per tonne gold at Walaba and 56.0 meters grading 0.97 g/t at Swalanga, reported as sampled lengths with true widths unknown. Van der Toorn said trenches across the project have cut intervals of 50 to 60 meters running about 0.9 to 1 g/t over roughly five kilometers of strike.
The company said the first holes will focus on what controls the higher-grade mineralization and whether it continues at depth. “We’re trying to understand what are the controls on those higher-grade portions because obviously that’s going to help the economics of any future development,” van der Toorn said.
The program is deliberately small. “We’re not over-committing to things from the get-go,” he said, adding that Greenheart will commit to a larger program once results are back.
How large a discovery needs to be depends on where it sits. “That is the other thing I think you’ve got to be very honest with yourself: if you’re looking for a project that’s in the middle of the interior, if it’s not three, four million ounces, you’re probably not going to be able to develop it because the costs of that development are going to be too high,” he said.
Greenheart’s other two Suriname projects face a lower bar. Majorodam sits about five kilometers south of Zijin’s Saramacca deposit, and Igab lies close to Newmont’s Merian operation. Van der Toorn said the company recently completed a 12,000-meter reverse circulation program at Majorodam and has drilled about 3,000 meters of core at Igab this year.
The company is well funded for that work. La Mancha announced in April that it would lift its stake in Greenheart to 19.9%, and van der Toorn said the resulting financing raised about C$60 million in May, leaving the company with roughly C$75 million in cash.
Asked why Greenheart raised that much at such an early stage, he said the treasury gives the company room to drop projects that fall short. “We want to spend the money in the ground, but we want to also be okay with failing, and we move on to another one.”
Greenheart has already done that in Guyana. After drill testing projects there, he said, the team concluded, “We’re not seeing the potential that we need for a project that’s going to be so remote in the interior.”
“Having that capital in the bank means you’re not desperate to try and deliver results out of a project that doesn’t necessarily warrant that kind of work,” van der Toorn said.
The cash also means Greenheart can add rigs quickly if a project works, without waiting on the market. “We recognize that time is very valuable here,” he said.
For van der Toorn, the size of the mineralized system matters more than the grade alone. “I think volume is the big thing,” he said. Artisanal miners are a useful guide to where gold occurs, but they often work a different style of deposit.
“They’re looking for high-grade quartz veins running half an ounce to an ounce. Makes wonderful money for them, but it doesn’t really build an economic mine, a large-scale economic mine.”
Greenheart was spun out of the merger of Reunion Gold and G Mining Ventures, and its team made the Oko West discovery in Guyana. Van der Toorn said Tosso Creek is a different kind of target. Oko, he said, was unique in its “70 meters of continuous mineralization running two to four grams,” and “we haven’t found anything quite as similar as Oko yet.”
The company has three projects in Suriname and one, Gold Hill, in Guyana, and van der Toorn said it plans to add more Guyana projects in the near term.
Over the next 12 to 18 months, the Tosso Creek results will decide whether Greenheart expands drilling there. “We’re here to make another discovery,” he said.
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