St. Andrew Goldfields digs deep for three new mines: more than $25 million to be spent through 2009.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TIMMINS

With cash in hand, people on the ground and confidence in the air, St. Andrew Goldfields officials are more than optimistic that three gold properties nearly 100 kilometres east of Timmins will be in production by next year.

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"Our focus will definitely be to go back into production in the near-term, and do more exploration in the eastern portion of the camp," says Jacques Perron, president and CEO.

"We have an excellent package of exploration properties as well with lots of potential for the future, so we're happy about our prospects."

Throughout the last year, whisperings have slipped through various corners of Timmins about the potential for the Holloway, Holt and Hislop mines to return to production.

These whispers were vindicated in early May 2009 when St. Andrew closed $16.2 million in debt financing, allowing the company to move ahead with its ambitious plans to bring all three into production by the end of 2010.

More than $25 million will be spent on the Holloway and Hislop mines this year alone, $10 million of which will go towards services and contractors.

The company's various holdings in the Timmins camp contain more than three million ounces of resources.

This includes the Holloway-Holt property, which Perron refers to as "the most important property," and contains 1.2 million ounces of gold resources across the two former mines.

The Holloway Mine is currently undergoing pre-production work, a process which is expected to take six months in anticipation of putting it in production by the fourth quarter of 2009.

Much of the advanced work has already been completed, including development, as well as the ventilation and ramp systems.

The resource totals for the East Timmins properties fail to include any numbers from the Hislop mine, an open pit operation which was mined by St. Andrew from 1990-1994, and then again through 1999 and 2000.

No industry-compliant figures are yet available for Hislop, which is currently the subject of a prefeasibility study due out by early July.

In advance of the study, 10,300 metres of core were drilled on Hislop through the first five months of 2009, while 7,000 metres of historical core were also sampled.

Perron anticipates bringing the open pit online by the end of 2009, or...