Thorco planning to benefit from McLeod’s mining smarts

Through London, England-based subsidiary Centurion Exploration, Thorco has interests in a Spanish heap leach gold project, four South African gold mines, and an Irish diatomite operation.

Via Centurion, Thorco also has rights to more than one million acres of Scottish gold and silver mining licences.

Thorco recently hooked up with McLeod when Centurion Exploration agreed to acquire a 50% stake in a subsidiary of Doelcam Mining Ltd., a private Toronto natural resource of which McLeod is president. In return, Doelcam picked up a 46.5% stake in Centurion.

Under an exploration program partially funded by Echo Bay Mines (TSE), Doelcam will take a close look at three mineral licences in west-central and northeastern Scotland.

Two of those licences are close to Ennex International’s Tyndrum gold deposit which contains 950,000 tons of grade 0.3 oz gold and 1.67 oz silver per ton.

However, it is McLeod’s previous experience with the Pamour Group of companies that persuaded Thorco’s managing director Michael Foster to sign the agreement with Doelcam.

“We hope that McLeod’s involvement in the group will have a significant impact on some of our projects,” Foster told The Northern Miner.

With McLeod’s help, Thorco will attempt to increase production at the Filon Sur gold-silver heap leach project in southwest Spain. Due to lower-than-forecast plant throughput and poor recovery rates, the operation is producing at a rate of about 10,000 oz gold annually, about 4,000 oz below capacity.

Held indirectly through Centurion Espana, Filon Sur has right to a number of calcine dumps with known reserves of about five million tons of grade 0.06 oz and 1.21 oz silver.

Foster is also looking for increased production from dump material at four small gold mines in the Eastern Transvaal district of South Africa. Together they are expected to produce about 10,000 oz gold this year.

Held by Centurion’s 25%-owned affiliate Cengold Holdings Ltd., they host 1.1 million tons of grade 0.2 oz. An additional 923,000 tons of grade 0.055 oz is contained in dumps, according to Foster.

Due to inadequate ore development, problems were encountered at two of the mines and they were temporarily shut down last September.

While Foster is hoping to acquire some exploration projects in Canada, he has found that resource properties in Europe tend to be much cheaper. T horco is currently trading at around 12 cents .

]]>