Bralorne pours first dor bar from historic BC gold mine

Vancouver – Seventy-nine years after the first gold brick was poured from one of British Columbia’s richest and largest gold mines, Bralorne Gold Mines (bpm-v) has restarted operations at the Bralorne complex. The company poured the first gold-silver doré bar from its fully operating 120-ton-per-day mill at an official opening ceremony held on May 27.

Containing 254 gold oz. and 59 silver oz., the bar is worth approximately $383,000 at today’s high metals prices, much more than the $6,217 the original first gold brick containing 363 gold oz. was worth back in 1932.

The Bralorne complex, located near the small town of Gold Bridge, B.C., about a five-hour drive or 322 km north of Vancouver, comprises a 25-sq.-km land package spanning the three major historic gold mines in the area – Bralorne, Pioneer and King.

Though the Bralorne camp shut down operations in 1971 due to the low price of gold at the time, it produced nearly four million ounces of gold during its lifetime and supported a town of roughly 10,000 people at its peak.

Bralorne the company is now working its way through a 14,000-ton surface stockpile of ore with an average grade of 0.368 ounce gold per ton (or 12.6 grams gold per tonne), followed by an even higher-grade 11,200-ton underground stockpile at 0.464 ounce gold (or 15.9 grams gold) from the BK stope.

The plan is to mine and explore for new mineralization in underexplored gap areas between the historic mines, with two significant discoveries made in recent years: the BK vein, a high-grade zone located between the Bralorne mine and the King mine; and the BP Gap zone, located between Bralorne and the Pioneer mine.

The mine’s reopening is the culmination of several decades worth of work for 78-year-old Louis Wolfin, who sadly retired as chairman of the company in November 2010. The long-time stockbroker and mining executive nevertheless remains close by: his long-time business associate William Kocken, 80, is now running the company as president and CEO, while his son David Wolfin currently acts as vice-president.

Wolfin Sr. first started exploring near Bralorne in the late 1950s with Ace Mining, a company which remains operating today under the name of Avino Silver & Gold Mines (asm-v), now a Mexico-focused miner which features son David as its president. After the Bralorne mines shut down, Wolfin returned to the area in the 1970s with several other companies under his control, including Coral Gold (clh-v) and Levon Resources (lvn-v), though he eventually consolidated all their interests into Avino in the late 1980s. Avino would discover significant gold mineralization in 1990 on its Loco property, adjoining the Bralorne mine, and by 1991 had acquired 100% control of all the mines and exploration properties in the Bralorne camp. The next year it announced grand plans to re-open the mine at a production rate between 300 to 400 tonnes per day.

A downturn in the markets led Avino to option a 50% interest in the project in 1995 to a then-dormant Bralorne-Pioneer Gold Mines, also controlled by Wolfin, but the pair of companies failed to get the operation off the ground before the price of gold collapsed below $300 an ounce in the early 2000s.

Bralorne-Pioneer acquired the entire interest in the mine in 2002 and by 2004, after changing names to Bralorne Gold Mines and rolling back its shares 1:10, started bulk sampling to test the feasibility of full-scale mining. (Technically, the company poured its first doré bar from Bralorne in April 2004, in conjunction with the bulk sampling program.) Investors have been waiting patiently for the mine to re-open ever since, despite several successful rounds of exploration, advanced geophysical surveys and the completion of many underground drifts.

It was not until 2009, however, that the company found an affluent backer with the funds necessary to move Bralorne back into production. Maxwell Munday, a real estate developer from Burnaby, B.C., and a prolific investor in penny mining stocks, has acquired 9.5 million shares of the company over the last few years in several private placements. He now controls approximately 33.9% of Bralorne’s 28.4 million issued and outstanding common shares, mostly through his private company, Munday Home Sales, and a not-for-profit Christian organization set up with his wife, the Munday-Maxwell & Gaylene Association.

Bralorne’s financial statements are not quick to disclose exactly how much gold the company plans to produce each year from its operations, but they do caution readers that the mine “is being operated on a trial basis initially.” The filings go on to state a feasibility study has not been completed but “viable operating and financial projections were made in a preliminary economic assessment by Beacon Hill Consultants [in] 2005, which was updated in 2007 based on a gold price of $600 per ounce and a milling rate of 280 tons per day.” The mill is now being run at a rate of 100 tons per day in order to “assess the economic parameters and potential viability of the operation at the current gold price.”

On June 16, the thinly-traded shares of Bralorne closed down 4¢ to $1.31 on volume of 1,000 shares. The stock has a 52-week range of 90¢ to $1.56.