Although the company hadn’t made the announcement by presstime, D’Or V al Mines will almost certainly be starting production this year on its Beacon No.2 mine, just east of Val d’Or, Que. The mill is nearly completed; the shaft ha s been sunk; the property is almost ready to go.
The Beacon is another of prospector Peter Ferderber’s discoveries in the Bourlamaque Batholith, not far from his Belmoral discovery. The reserves on the prope rty are not all that large — just over two years’ ore in the proven and probabl e categories, with another three years’ in the inferred classification — but th e property already has a sizeable stockpile on surface and many of the undergrou nd working areas have been exposed during exploration work.
Total reserves in all categories stand at 778,594 tons grading about 0.225 oz gold per ton across an average width of 15 ft. The structure dips at 70degrees. Production is planned to begin at 450 tons per day, with the remaining capacity of the 750-tpd, straight cyanide mill being available for milling outside ores.
Since so many new mines make operating profits but are unable to pay off their debts, one of the big advantages of the Beacon mine is its debt-free status. Current estimates are for costs of about $235(C) to produce an ounce of gold, and this could be lowered by about $25 by upping production to 750 tpd — something which could only happen if additional reserves are proven up at depth.
One of the Hughes-Lang group of companies, D’Or Val has been working on the Beacon since 1980. Production from the property would be the third mine put in by this Vancouver-based pair. That means Richard Hughes and Frank Lang would be res ponsible for four producing mines in Canada (including Belmoral’s two mines and the famous Golden Giant at Hemlo) — a record matched by only one or two active promoters.
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