The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.
TIMMINS – Black Fox mine employees began meeting with their new owners this week.
On Wednesday, Primero Mining Corp. completed a deal to acquire all assets of Brigus Gold including the Black Fox mine and mill located in Black River-Matheson, as well as the adjacent Grey Fox mine property. The agreement was initially announced in December.
“The company was created about three-and-a-half years ago,” said Joseph Conway, Primero president and chief executive, who was at the Days Inn in Timmins to meet with mine staff. “It was through a buyout of an asset from Goldcorp in Mexico. It was a producing mine and it was running at 90,000 ounces a year but it was under-capitalized and since then we’ve been reinvesting back into that operation and are now producing about 160,000 ounces a year.”
While Primero plans to continue that trend of investing in its assets, Conway admitted they will be a little less bullish about bringing Grey Fox into production. The previous owner, Brigus Gold, had talked last year of pulling Grey Fox into production by the first half of 2015.
“We see the Grey Fox project as quite interesting, but we need to spend some more money and do some more work on it,” said Conway.
“We would like to see more ounces basically so that’s why we’re going to be drilling pretty aggressively during the remainder of this year. If we can get the ounces up, then it becomes a much more viable project, a lot quicker.”
Conway said declining gold prices factored in that decision.
“For sure, there’s no question, when it was $1,700, it looked a lot better than it does when it’s at $1,350. There’s no question that’s been part of it.”
Conway said it is possible the company could determine after further drilling that the Grey Fox mine is not worth putting into production at all.
Brigus had also spoken last year of expanding the processing facility.
However, Conway said that expansion was proposed in anticipation that there would be two mines sending ore to that processing plant. That will not be case, now, at least for time being.
“The Grey Fox viability and the mill expansion are very much linked,” he said. “So once we have determined that Grey Fox is indeed a mine and we need to expand the plant, then we will.”
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