(Magna Gold, 29.Jun.2021) — Magna Gold Corp. (TSXV: MGR), (OTCQB: MGLQF) achieved full-scale and steady state commercial production at its 100% owned flagship San Francisco Mine, located in Sonora, Mexico.
Commercial production was achieved on schedule on 1 June 2021, as outlined in the company’s press release dated 13 April 2021. Furthermore, the company is on track to achieve and reiterates its earlier stated 2021 guidance of 55,000 – 65,000 oz of gold (“Au”) production.
In the first half of the year, the company completed the necessary pre-stripping and substantially lowered the mine strip ratio from ~8:1 to ~3:1, which is continuing to trend downwards towards the life of mine (“LOM”) average of 2.5:1. Moving forward, the company anticipates further decreases to the strip ratio and increased recovery rates which will lead to cost improvements.
At San Francisco, the company anticipates a production run rate of ~6,000 Au oz/month in Q3 and looks to exit the year at a run rate of ~7,500 Au oz/month.
Highlights
- Completed all necessary pre-stripping to achieve 2.9:1 strip ratio at full-scale commercial operations, which is expected to trend downwards through LOM.
- Completed construction of new leach pads and began stacking fresh ore at a steady-state rate of 900 metric tons per hour.
- Optimized grind size and leach kinetics improving recovery rates to ~70% with further improvements anticipated over the LOM.
- Continues commitment to health and safety, achieving over 3.5 million man-hours without a lost-time incident.
Arturo Bonillas, President and CEO of Magna stated: “We are all extremely proud of the Magna team for achieving this tremendous milestone on schedule. Achieving full-scale commercial production in such a short period of time is a testament to the hard work and quality of our Mexico-based operations team and as a company, we have demonstrated our ability to execute on all our target deliverables. Production numbers are trending upwards month-to-month, and we anticipate exiting the year producing ~7,500 Au oz/month. We are continuing our systematic exploration efforts as we look to grow the company into a mid-tier producer.”
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