Production rate goes up at Pioneer’s Puffy Lake

Ore reserves have nearly doubled at Pioneer Metals’ Puffy Lake gold project and with this increase comes an expanded mill throughput to 1,000 tons per day.

As a result of a recently completed diamond drill program, reserves at this Manitoba gold project now stand at 2.482 million tons of 0.233 oz gold per ton, up from the previously reported 1.3 million tons of similar grade. Of the total inventory, 1.101 million tons at 0.236 oz gold are classified as probable and 729,000 at 0-.233 oz gold as possible reserves.

Of the 225 holes drilled to date, results of the final 12 have not yet been calculated in the current mineral reserves. Two of these drill holes were stepped out about 1,000 ft from previous drilling.

The company says that visually the gold horizon intersections appear identical to all other drill holes leaving the ore zones open along strike and down drip.

Drilling is scheduled to start after spring break-up to again increase and upgrade reserves as well as to drill test several other gold occurrences discovered last year.

Because of these increased reserves, the mine will be develped at 1,000 tons per day rather than the previously reported 550 tons per day.

Based on this higher through put, Pioneer is now forecasting gold production of about 72,000 oz per year.

The company anticipates that the original $18.1 (C) million capital cost budgeted for Puffy Lake should be sufficient since much of the concentrator was already being designed for future expansion.

Mill site excavation is due to start in the middle of this month with pre-production underground development set to start at about month-end.

Targeted completion to 75% design capacity is mid-December of this eyar with full production scheduled to start shortly after that time.