Abcourt pours first gold from historic Sleeping Giant

Abcourt Mines (TSXV: ABI; US-OTC: ABMBF) has officially placed Quebec’s past-producing Sleeping Giant mine back on the map with its first gold pour after two months of development work.

The milestone occurred Thursday at the site in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, among a dozen other gold properties the company holds in the Eeyou Istchee region near James Bay, the company said.    

The gold pour is “just the beginning of what promises to be an exciting chapter” for the company, Abcourt President and CEO Pascal Hamelin said in a release. 

Separately this week, he said the project’s next stage will be to start delivering gold bars to the market as bullion prices hit new records this month. The gold spot price was near $3,643 per oz. on Friday. 

Shares of Abcourt traded flat at C8¢ apiece in Toronto by mid-Friday for a market capitalization of about C$81 million. The stock last closed at that level in August. 

Rebooted gold mine

The milestone marks the first time that the Sleeping Giant mine has produced its first gold in over a decade. The historic site operated between 1987 and 2014, producing over 1 million oz. of gold. In the ensuing years, Abcourt used the 250,000-tonne-per year process plant to treat ore from nearby mines, and only recently turned on the mill again.

In June 2023, the company laid out its plans to restore operations at the mine and mill, eyeing an initial capital investment of C$42 million and an 18-month timeline to completion. A preliminary economic assessment that year estimated an annual production of 30,000 oz. over a mine life of 5.8 years, under the assumption that the mill would only operate at half its capacity.

“This project could quickly become the next gold producer in Quebec,” Hamelin said at the time, adding that the next step is to upgrade the resource base at Sleeping Giant. At present, the underground deposit hosts about 173,330 oz. in measured and indicated resources and 248,300 oz. in inferred resources, the company estimates.