North American Metals may expand mill

Drilling on the Kodiak zone at the Golden Bear property in northwestern British Columbia continues to return gold values. Indeed, work to date has prompted North American Metals (VSE) to consider expanding the existing mill to 1,000 from 365 tonnes per day.

The expansion would allow for potential production from Kodiak, which is 2 km north of the underground mining operations of the Main Bear zone. The company, which is completing a bulk sample from Kodiak for metallurgical testing, estimates the mill expansion would cost roughly $5 million. Additional drilling is planned, to test Kodiak to the south and, in particular, to determine if it is actually part of the Fleece Bowl zone. The latter, 150 metres to the south of Kodiak, is estimated to contain 230,000 tonnes grading 10.3 grams gold per tonne.

The southernmost hole drilled on Kodiak returned 9 grams over 17.8 metres. Meanwhile, North American is driving a decline down to the Grizzly zone, which is below and south of Main Bear. Previous drilling from surface on Grizzly returned values of up to 14.4 grams over 15.5 metres and the company determined that, because of technical problems related to surface drilling, further evaluation would best be done from underground.

North American Metals is 85%-owned by Wheaton River Minerals (TSE). Recent results from Kodiak are:

Hole Width Gold

(metres) (g/tonne)

94-212 19.7 8.46

94-213 6.3 7.36

94-214 4.4 2.68

94-215 3.6 5.00

94-218 13.9 9.92

94-219 1.6 20.72

and 1.6 7.26

and 10.5 2.82