Auric Mining is planning to extract a minimum 300,000 tonnes of ore from its Jeffrey Find gold deposit in Western Australia’s Goldfields region as a follow-up to a profitable first phase at the operation that delivered it more than $4.7 million in free cash.
The company produced more than 9740 gold ounces during two 2023 mining campaigns with JV partner BML Ventures. The company produced more than 9740 gold ounces during two 2023 mining campaigns with joint venture (JV) partner BML Ventures, returning total revenue of $29.28 million for the first stage of the two-year project.
Auric says BML extracted 175,000 tonnes of ore from Jeffreys Find last year, with almost $10 million total surplus cash generated between the two companies.
The JV is now set for its second campaign to kick off early next month and has confirmed that mining equipment will be mobilised on-site this week, with all approvals in place. BML has executed a contract with FMR Investments to toll mill a minimum 300,000 tonnes of ore at the Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie throughout the year, with the project set to wrap up early in 2025.
Stage One of the Project produced 9741 ounces of gold, which averaged 1.86g/t. Jeffreys Find is straight-forward mining and we know what to expect. Our level of confidence is high that Stage Two will produce substantially more ounces, compared to 2023. Auric Mining managing director Mark English
English says the JV will conduct multiple processing campaigns this year and expects BML to put its first parcel through the mill in April. He also confirmed in an ASX release earlier this week that he planned to exercise all of the 333,340 options in his control to inject $50,000 into Auric.
Management says it has paid $1 million as a working capital contribution to BML for this year’s operations. Apart from that payment, BML will incur and pay all additional mining costs and expenses.
After completing the final phase of mining, the two partners will subtract all costs before again splitting the surplus cash proceeds on a 50:50 basis.
Auric is expecting first cash from the second phase of mining at Jeffreys Find in the last quarter of this year and further cash in first quarter of next year. The company plans to put its surplus cash to work by continuing with the development of its Munda gold deposit at Widgiemooltha – which it sees as its current “big game” operation – alongside broader exploration around Norseman.
The Munda operation sits just 3km south-west of Mincor Resources’ Widgiemooltha gold project, which has a mineral resource of 4.3 million tonnes at 2 grams per tonne gold for 273,600 ounces. A recently-released scoping study on Munda outlined a cashflow surplus of $76.9 million under a base-case scenario using an assumed gold price of $2600 per ounce.
The company has drilled 351 holes to complete the campaign at the operation, with assays already received from 244 holes sunk representing about 70 per cent of the program back from the laboratory.
Highlights include a 9m section grading 21.37g/t gold from 18m including an impressive 1m at 184.6g/t from 24m. Additional high-grade results show a 4m section going 20.13g/t gold from 28m including 1m reading 77.18g/t from 29m and 4m at 18.84g/t from just 11m including 1m at 68.94g/t from 13m.
This morning’s confirmation of the JV’s mining plans for 2024 appeared to grab the attention of the market, with Auric’s shares price jumping almost 9 per cent to touch 12.5c from a previous close of 11.5c.
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