Metanor pours gold at Bachelor Lake mill (April 08, 2008)

Metanor Resources (MTO-V) has poured the first 2,000 oz. of gold from its recently-revived Bachelor Lake mill near Desmaraisville, Que.

The company began processing ore from its Barry open pit property, located 65-km southeast of the mill, at the end of 2007. The first gold bars are from mill feed taken from the bulk sampling program currently underway.

Metanor says it’s on target to producing its forecast of 25,000 oz. gold for 2007.

Right now, the mill is operating at a rate of 500 tons per day but that will increase to 700 tons per day in the near future, the company says.

Metanor’s new vice-president operations, Claude Imbeault, says operations are running smoothly.

“The mill is operating very well during this start-up phase, and with each day comes improvements in recovery and overall efficiencies,” Imbeault said in a statement.

The company has just begun a 15,000-metre drill program on the Barry property to investigate lateral extensions and extensions at depth of the main mineralized zone to increase resources.

The program will also investigate extensions of zone 43 located about 75 metes to 100 metres to the southeast of the main zone, which in past drilling, returned intersections of 4 metres grading 20 grams gold per tonne and 6.8 metres grading 5.9 grams gold per tonne.

In March, Metanor staked an additional 22.9 sq. km surrounding the Barry property, bringing the land position to about 69 sq. km. The additional land is divided into two blocks, one located southeast and the other northeast of the Barry deposit, and includes a total of 112 mining claims.