Golden Goose busy at Magino

Toronto-based Golden Goose Resources (GGR-T) has completed more metallurgical work to determine the feasibility of a heap-leach mine at its Magino gold property near Wawa, Ont.

The program, carried out by Kappes Cassiday & Associates on granodiorite material crushed to minus-9.5 mm, indicated a recovery of 56%. Results show that gold recovery can be increased to 84% by crushing the granodiorite material to minus-1.7 mm. However, crushing to this size would require four stages and result in higher capital costs.

The test results were used to upgrade previous engineering studies by an independent consultant. Those studies showed that production costs could be lowered to US$193 per oz. by finer crushing, down from US$256 per oz. using the coarser grind size. Conventional milling, on the other hand, would result in 93% recoveries and cash costs of US$191 per oz. However, capital costs would be US$147 million, compared with a range of $88-97 million for a heap-leach operation. These numbers are preliminary and will be used only to guide additional work.

Magino produced briefly in the past and is now being evaluated for its open-pit potential. Previous mining exploited narrow, high-grade veins.

At last report, the deposit hosted reserves of 20.5 million tons grading 0.05 oz. gold per ton. If lower-grade reserves are factored into the mine plan, the estimate changes to 33.1 million tons of 0.04 oz. gold.