St Andrew Goldfields reports resource for Hislop project

The Hislop project, about 85 km east of Timmins in the Abitibi greenstone belt, contains 425,000 ounces of gold in the indicated category and 309,000 ounces in the inferred category, St Andrew Goldfields (SAS-T) reports.

Hislop is in the central portion of St Andrew Goldfields’ 120 km land package in the Timmins mining district, which straddles the Porcupine-Destor Fault Zone, and is about 45 km away from the company’s Holt mine and mill and its Holloway mine, which is set to start production in the fourth quarter.

A new resource estimate demonstrates Hislop has indicated resources of about 6.66 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.98 grams gold per tonne and an inferred resource of about 5.34 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.80 grams gold per tonne.

The estimate was based on previous drill campaigns including the results from a recently completed 10,300-metre drill program. The resource was estimated at a block cut-off grade of 0.94 gram gold per tonne and a minimum mining width of 2 metres.

Jacques Perron, the company’s president and chief executive, said the company is proceeding with a prefeasibility study and noted he was pleased with the resource estimate, which identified wide zones of lower grade gold mineralization near surface.

If the Hislop project turns into a mine, ore will be processed at the company’s nearby Holt mill, and would add to the mill feed that will come from underground production at the Holloway mine.

Gold mineralization at Hislop is similar to that at Holloway — consisting of fine grained gold and sulfides within silicified mafic volcanics.

Gold mineralization at Hislop has a strike length of 1,200metres following the fault contact between mafic flows to the north and ultramafic rocks to the south.

The gold is associated with the margins of feldspar porphyritic syenite dikes, and sub-parallel zones of up to 20 metres in width, “that are generally conformable to the contact between the mafic and ultramafic rocks striking west-northwest and dipping steeply to the north,” the company stated in a press release.

Hislop has been mined at intervals since the 1930s, most recently in 1999-2000 and in 2006-2007.

During these periods, a small open pit was operated from which about 238,200 tonnes at an average grade of 3.11 grams gold per tonne were mined and processed.

The company has permits from previous mining campaigns with amendments to the existing closure plan in progress.

Existing infrastructure includes access roads, a power line and a water settling pond. The site is cleared of trees and the central section has minimal overburden coverage, which should allow for the initiation of mining activities with less difficulty and expense than would be involved with similar projects in the area.

At presstime St Andrew Goldfields was trading at 47¢ and has a 52-week trading range of 6.5¢-50¢. The company has 324.1 million shares outstanding.