A BREAKNECK PACE Pan-Empire

In the fall of last year, an A.C.A. Howe company, Ateba Mines of Toronto, started screening and sorting old mine dump material grading as low as 0.01 oz gold per ton. This material, from the old Northern Empire mine, is located directly behind the relatively new Pan-Empire mill built by Pancontinental Mining (Canada) in 1981 near Beardmore, Ont. Between 1934 and 1941, the Northern Empire mine produced nearly 150,000 oz of gold. Now, Ateba is recovering even more of the yellow metal from the mine’s waste piles. Since gold in this mining camp is generally associated with quartz, Ateba is successfully using a state-of- the-art ore-sorting machine to do what would normally be done by human sorters — picking white chunks of quartz ore out of the predominantly dark-colored ore piles. Done manually this job would be incredibly monotonous and expensive. Using a sorting machine manufactured by Ore Sorters of Peterborough, Ont., about 90% of the barren waste rock is rejected at very low cost.

The sorted material, grading an average of 0.5 oz gold per ton, is then blended with low grade material and fed to the 400-ton-per-day mill. Millhead grades have been averaging about 0.215 oz gold per ton.

Ateba will continue to treat this old dump material for the next two years from this and two other former producing mines — the Leitch mine and the Sturgeon River mine — while exploring a number of very promising gold properties in the area. Pan-Empire Notebook Location: ……. Beardmore, Ont. Major owners: ……. Ateba Mines (Pancontinental retains a 13.75% net smelter interest) Commodity: ……. gold from old mine dumps Production decision: ……. unavailable Start-up: ……. Sept 15, 1987 Capital costs: ……. unavailable Operating costs: ……. $250(US) an oz Reserves: ……. 457,000 tons of

0.06 oz gold per ton in old mine dumps Mining method: ……. Screening and

sorting Production rate: ……. 400 tons per day to produce 8,400 oz per year Major contractors: ……. Gaston Poulin, Lakefield Research. Status:…… production