Signal Gold expands plans for Goldboro
GOLDBORO — Twelve months out from obtaining its final permits, Signal Gold has discovered a “vast area” of rich and recoverable deposits that could greatly expand its mining plans for Goldboro, says the company’s president, Kevin Bullock.
“Before, [with our current reserve at Goldboro] we may have been looking for a needle in a haystack, which we found,” he told The Journal in an interview last week from Toronto. “But, with the geophysics that we’ve just done in the area [beyond that deposit], we’re now looking at several needles in a hay field... This is a vast area and probably a gold camp... We weren’t expecting that.”
A gold camp is what mining engineers call a huge deposit of concentrated, economically viable mineral – the “Eldorado,” in effect, of the industry, and a leading indicator for potential investors. “With the current Goldboro reserve that we have, based on a feasibility study, we had been permitting a development and production scenario of about 100,000 ounces a year over 11 years,” Bullock said. “What this [new information] says to us is that we’re not here for 11 years; we’re here for multi-decade gold mining.”
Signal (then Anaconda Mining) began exploring in and around Goldboro in 2017, after acquiring a seven-square-kilometre concession. Over the years, the company has expanded its exploration in the broader area three times, the latest at Stewart Brook, where the promising results came to light last month. “That’s an area of about 78 square-kilometres, so we’ve really expanded our exploration licenses by about 40 times [the original scope],” Bullock said.
Ultimately, he said, “a mill and facilities at Goldboro could be leveraged to be a central mill for several deposits, if we find them... and we believe that a lot more will be found in the land that we’ve acquired through exploration. Further permitting will be required for that.”
Bullock expects Signal – which received its environmental go-ahead in August 2022 – to obtain its remaining provincial government permits for the Goldboro site, including various industrial approvals, “within the next 12 months.”
According to company statements, the two-pit operation – including processing and tailings management facilitates, and waste rock storage areas – had been expected to generate hundreds of jobs. Said Bullock: “Now, we think there’s a hub and spoke situation in the area; that, it’s a mining camp, not just one deposit, and that it will be there for generations to come.”
Alec Bruce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Guysborough Journal
