St Andrew Goldfields eyeing fourth mine: underground drilling under consideration.

• Author: Cowan, Liz
• Position: TIMMINS

St Andrew Goldfields may be adding a fourth gold mine to its operations in the Timmins mining camp.

Already with three mines in the Matheson area east of Timmins (Holt, Holloway and Hislop), and a milling facility," the company is eyeing its Taylor project as a target for production.

"We are drilling off the deposit to advance it to a pre-feasibility study for the fourth quarter of this year," said Duncan Middlemiss, vice-president and general manager of the east Timmins operations. "That will give us the wherewithal to decide to go underground to do more refined definition drilling and obviously that is a lot of development, just to see what is there."

The pre-feasibility stage would involve environmental, mining and geological studies in order to put a base case together.

"If the numbers convince you that you have a good shot at building something here, then essentially the company would make the investment in order to go ahead with the underground development," he said.

The deposits have "spectacular high grade intercepts of gold," Middlemiss said, but are "tricky" since they are more difficult to follow. They are not as continuous as the other deposits found in the Holt and Holloway Mines, and not as predictable.

"So what we need to do is get underground and start close-spaced drilling in order to put the geological model together and that's the best way to see what is there," he said.

Currently, surface drilling is occurring on the site with two to three rigs.

"If the pre-feasibility is positive, then we can advance our plans and go ahead with the underground development," Middle-miss said. "We would have to develop the underground drill platforms in order to do the detailed definition drilling."

If the project was developed, about 200 to 250 people would be required. Currently the company employs 286 people at its operations and 236 contractors...