The town of Geraldton is “on the map” with the potential for junior exploration companies to mine and mill gold ore in the community.
It begins with the Greenstone Gold Mine, which is owned by Equinox Gold, opening a pit at an older mine that it has been mining for about a year. Equinox went into commercial production in November of last year and processes ore in its new $1.5-billion mill in Geraldton.
Michael Malouf, president of Hardrock Extension Inc., which is located immediately next to Equinox Gold’s Greenstone open pit, off of Hardrock’s western boundary, said this is great news for the industry.
“Mines that operated on the west end of the camp were quite small, and the (Greenstone) mine that Equinox is making an open pit out was huge,” Malouf said.
“It operated for 30 years, and they took 2.1 million ounces of gold out of it. Well, Equinox is going to take out 7.2 million ounces. They’re actually going to take out three and a half times more gold than was taken out by the old timers in the first 30 years.”
Malouf added that they are going to be mining at an average of 366,000 ounces a year for 15 years.
‘That’s like 1,000 ounces a day and that’s a lot of gold,” he said.
Meanwhile, Malouf’s Hard Rock company followed two iron formations to the east and found another six large, “folded structures” that has fractured the rock to create an environment for this deposit of gold. With 21 gold occurrences over the belt, Malouf says these major targets have not been explored, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be gold-bearing.
“They haven’t been tested, and that’s really what we’re doing,” he said.
“We’ve found these targets, and it’s a pretty big deal for some little company to take over the six targets, but they could take one and make a mine out of it. We’re hoping we can get three or four companies in there all working at finding a mine and really get the camp going.”
Pulling the ore from the mine is one thing and having a mill to process it is a tremendous expense for junior companies that cannot afford to build their own mill.
Malouf added that Equinox Gold is “very abreast” of what they’ve got but their focus is on mining their own site before doing exploration.
“And we can’t afford to wait for that, so we want to get somebody else in to help open this up,” he said.
Malouf called the Geraldton Mining Camp “a real sleeper” because there has been no mill in the Geraldton area since the last mine closed down in 1968. He said now that there is a “home for the ore” thanks to Equinox Gold and their $1.5-billion mill, junior exploration companies are able to drill off an initial 50,000- to 100,000-ounce deposit.
“They can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve producer status by getting their gold ore custom milled at the Greenstone Gold Mine,” he said.
