Auteco was a shell when it agreed to acquire up to 80% of First Mining’s Pickle Crow project in Ontario in early 2020, and by the end of that year had defined JORC resources of one million ounces.
Today the team that helped set high-grade Western Australian gold story Bellevue Gold on its road to development has unveiled its latest upgraded inferred resource estimate, claiming Pickle Crow hosts 2.23Moz grading 7.8 grams per tonne.
By Auteco’s reckoning, there are only 130 resources above 2Moz across Canada, the US or Australia, and just 18 have grades above 4gpt, and that includes names such as Fosterville in Victoria; Granny Smith, Agnew/Lawlers and St Ives in WA; and Evolution Mining’s Red Lake, close to Pickle Crow.
The latest increase of 514,000oz from 2021’s 1.7Moz mid-year update has been driven by exploration success of the two distinct mineralisation styles at a reported discovery cost of A$17.58/oz.
The resource is dominated by the high-grade quartz veins, 1.92Moz at 9.3gpt, while the emerging alteration-hosted near-surface resources in the banded iron formations contains 304,000oz at 3.8gpt.
Auteco is engaged in the tail end of a 50,000m drilling campaign, and it is now testing regional targets during the Canadian winter with three of five diamond rigs tasked to look further away from known resources.
Executive chairman Ray Shorrocks said it was clear Pickle Crow offered “immense potential for ongoing increases in the inventory” within the 500sq.km project area, with the resources confined to a fraction of the total area.
Pickle Crow has historical production reported of 1.5Moz at 16.1gpt. It was one of Canada’s highest grade underground producers, targeting the quartz lodes prior to 1966 using hand-held mining methods.
Auteco is targeting similar lodes, while the BIF gold is considered amendable to bulk mining methods.
There is already a 225 tonne per day processing plant on site that was built in 2004 but never commissioned. It offers potential for accelerated production, with costs tipped at C$40 million.
It can move to 80% by paying $3 million cash and issuing a royalty to its partner.
The company started the year with $10.5 million cash.
