GoGold Resources Inc. of Halifax reported Thursday that new drilling has added to the resource at its Santa Gertrudis gold mine in Sonora, Mexico.
The drilling was done outside the mine’s present resource of 609,600 ounces of indicated and 141,400 ounces of inferred gold, announced in June, and will be incorporated in the project’s preliminary economic assessment.
The company said it will issue the assessment shortly.
Santa Gertrudis is a past-producing gold mine GoGold acquired in April as part of its $11-million purchase of Vancouver’s Animas Resources Ltd.
The original mine operated from 1991 to 2000, producing 564,000 ounces of gold before closing due to low gold prices.
Santa Gertrudis, which will cost $20 million to $30 million to reopen, is expected to be up and running next year.
GoGold’s other Mexican project, the $35-million Parral mine in Chihuahua, poured its first silver-gold bar in June.
GoGold is using chemical-based heap leach technology to separate gold and silver from 21 million tonnes of tailings produced by centuries of mining activity in and around the city of Parral.
The tailings are being moved nine kilometres from Parral to a closed processing system that sits on a lined pad underlaid with clay.
GoGold president Terry Coughlin said the two Mexican mining operations will produce 100,000 to 120,000 ounces of gold a year at a cost of $700 an ounce, well below the $1,100 to $1,200 an ounce production costs of larger, mid-tier mining companies.
