The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.
Goldcorp (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) has been so growth-oriented over the past decade, building new mines across the Americas and snapping up gold assets left and right, it’s easy to forget sometimes just how productive its Ontario gold mines are.
Goldcorp’s three wholly owned gold production centres in Ontario — Red Lake, Musselwhite and Porcupine — yielded an impressive 1.04 million oz. gold in 2013, or 39% of Goldcorp’s companywide production of 2.67 million oz. gold last year.
And the global reserves and resources at these three Ontario mines total 21.2 million oz. gold, or 19% of Goldcorp’s companywide total of 112.6 million oz. gold. The jewel in Goldcorp’s crown remains the Red Lake underground mine in the town of Red Lake in the province’s northwest. Goldcorp rightly calls it its “Canadian cornerstone and the world’s richest gold mine.”
Indeed, after all these years, it’s still Goldcorp’s top-producing mine, cranking out 493,000 oz. gold in 2013. In the first half of 2014, Red Lake produced 184,500 oz. gold, putting it on track to hit 440,000 to 480,000 oz. gold for the full year.
The mining method for the quartz-vein deposit is longhole, underhand and overhand cut-and-fill, and the milling rate at two nearby surface facilities totals 3,100 tonnes per day.
Goldcorp describes the surface processing as consisting of grinding, gravity concentrating, leaching, carbon-in-pulp, carbon elution and reactivation, electrowinning, bullion smelting/refining and cyanide destruction, flotation and concentrate handling — “all of which are required to recover the three types of gold in the Red Lake ore.”
For the first half of 2014, the Red Lake output alone accounted for 14% of Goldcorp’s 1.33 million oz. gold production. (Goldcorp’s updated total production guidance for 2014 is 2.95 million to 3.10 million oz. gold.)
At the end of 2013, proven and probable reserves at Red Lake stood at 8 million tonnes grading 9.94 grams gold per tonne for 2.55 million contained oz. gold. Another 4.6 million tonnes grading 16.34 grams gold lie in the measured and indicated resource category, for another 2.41 million contained oz. gold.
That’s enough for at least another 12 years of mine life, which is good news for the mine’s workforce of 1,250 people, including contractors.
Within the company, the Red Lake asset still ranks as its highest-grading reserve, outpacing the wholly owned, newly producing Cerro Negro gold mine in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province, with its proven and probable reserves of 18.9 million tonnes at 9.43 grams gold for 5.74 million oz. gold.
While the famed High Grade zone is the golden heart of the Red Lake operation, with its current head grade of more than 45 grams gold per tonne, Goldcorp comments that its recent investments in infrastructure and development have “positioned this renowned mine for many more years of long-term sustainable production.”
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