Bam deposit grows to 1.5 million oz gold with Landore’s new resource estimate

Landore Resources (AIM: LND) has released new resource numbers for the Bam gold deposit at its 100%-owned Junior Lake project 235 km northeast of Thunder Bay in the province of Ontario.

The total in situ global resources at Bam are estimated to contain 1.5 million oz. of gold in 49.2 million tonnes grading 1 gram gold per tonne. The new estimate represents a 47% increase in contained gold compared to the estimate released in 2019.

The updated estimate includes 1 million oz. gold in 31 million tonnes at 1 gram gold per tonne in the indicated category and 467,000 oz. gold in 18.3 million tonnes at 0.8 gram gold per tonne in the inferred category.

To support the new estimate, Landore’s 2020-21 infill and step-out drilling campaign consisted of 102 holes totalling 24,171 metres.

The Bam deposit is known to extend 4,300 metres striking east-west and to a depth of 380 metres. It is open in all directions. Soil sampling has identified gold mineralization along strike to the west for a further 7,000 metres.

Given the shallow nature of the mineralization, the deposit could be mined using open pit methods. Pit optimization work is underway.

The initial metallurgical test results indicate the ore is amenable to conventional milling techniques. Up to 99% of the free gold was recovered by combined gravity concentration and cyanidation leaching of the gravity tails. Satisfactory leaching took between two and six hours.

Landore says the recent drill campaign confirmed the corrections of an induced polarity (IP) anomaly from geophysics conducted in 2004.

Future exploration drilling will target gold mineralization where soil geochemistry has been promising, the footwall massive to disseminated sulphide zones within the Bam gold mineralized zones, and others along the 31-km strike length of the Junior Lake shear and a historical discovery at Toronto Lake. Drilling will restart in the second quarter of this year.

The preliminary economic assessment for the Bam project was updated in January 2020 using a gold price of US$1,500 per ounce. It gave the project a post-tax net present value of US$124.9 million and an internal rate of return of 35.4%. The initial capex requirement would be US$93.8 million to create a producer with a 3.5-year payback. The all-in sustaining cost of an ounce of gold would be US$806.