Richmont adds ounces at Monique and Wasamac

Vancouver – Richmont Mines (RIC-T) has released a resource estimate for its potentially near-term producing Monique gold deposit in Quebec shortly after issuing a resource update at Wasamac.

The project now hosts an indicated open pit resource of 728,164 tonnes grading 2.35 grams gold per tonne for 55,112 oz. gold.

The company already submitted a permit application for a small open pit operation on the property in November, and next year hopes to start a 5,000-tonne bulk sample from the project to be processed at the company’s Camflo mill and continues more technical work to see how far the company might expand the resource.

To that end the company started a 1,700-metre drill program in December to add to the roughly 8,100 metres the company drilled on the G and J zones of the Monique project in 2011.

According to Richmont the gold mineralization is defined by a network of quartz/tourmaline/carbonate veins and veinlets, measuring 1 cm – 10 cm, with disseminated sulphides in the altered wall rocks. Free gold is observed frequently in the veins. A total of 12 gold zones have been observed on the Property over the years, the most promising being the G and J Zones, and the A and B Zones.

The project sits 25 km east of Val-d’Or, Quebec, spans 5.4-sq.-km, and sits 50 km from the Camflo Mill.

Only days before Richmont released an updated resource on its Wasamac gold property 15 km west of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. The update added 35% to the measured and indicate category and 115% to the inferred resource. Wasamac now hosts 6.8 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 2.56 grams gold for 556,385 oz. gold using a 1.5 gram gold cut-off, plus 25.7 million inferred tonnes grading 2.58 grams gold for 2.1 million contained oz. gold.

At Wasamac the company will start a 32,000-metre definition drill program on the upper portion of zones 1, 2 and 3 to a depth of 500 metres and the deeper part of the main zone, with are mostly in the inferred category.

The company’s wholly-owned, 7.6-sq.-km Wasamac property hosts the past-producing Wasamac mine that previously produced 253,000 oz. gold at a grade of 4.16 grams gold between 1965 and 1971.

Richmont’s share price climbed 95¢ or 9% to end at $11.53 on the latest news. The company has a 52-week share price range between $4.28 and $13.39 and 33 million shares outstanding.