West Red Lake Gold Mines – The Strategy Behind The Recent Financing, And A Comprehensive Development and Exploration Update Building Towards The Madsen Mine Restart In Q2
Gwen Preston, VP of Communication at West Red Lake Gold Mines (TSX.V:WRLG – OTCQB:WRLGF), joins us to review the rationale behind the recent capital raise in tandem with all the development and exploration initiatives on the ground and underground, to support the restart of gold production towards the end of Q2 at the Madsen Mine, in the Red Lake district of Ontario, Canada.
We start off reviewing the corporate strategy behind the recent financing announced February 18th on the bought deal public offering, that was then upsized and closed on February 25th with 23,628,000 charity flow-through units of the Company at a price of C$0.8487 per Charity Flow-Through Unit for aggregate gross proceeds to the Company of $20,053,083.60. Gwen reiterated that this was definitely not because the mine restart is running into any challenges or cost overruns; but rather to provide optionality in a number of different ways to protect the company from predatory bids, fuel further development initiatives, and allow the company to be able to pounce on opportunities that may present themselves.
Next we got into all the all the mine restart activities well underway with the 185 employees and over 50 contractors busy with so many different initiatives from underground drilling, working on completing the connection drift, and working on producing the bulk sample and test mining stockpiles to run through the mill as an initial first step in the process of restarting the Madsen mine and mill. After the bulk sample is completed, then the operations team is still on track to begin commissioning the mill and starting put more through it over Q2 as things begin to ramp up to nameplate production in the second half of this year.
Wrapping up, we also focused on the overall exploration strategy for the company. We reviewed the successful infill and definition drilling at the South Austin Zone, with results released on February 26th, returning 114.26 g/t Au over 10.6 meters, 77.90 g/t Au over 3 meters and 24.48 g/t Au over 8.5 meters. In addition to all the definition drilling for the near-term mine planning, there is also still all the blue-sky exploration upside potential from multiple attractive targets that have shown potential. Gwen reviews key targets like Upper 8, North Shore, North Venue, the Fork deposit, and the satellite Rowan Project that will begin to get more drilling in the second half of this year, once the mine is back in operation and the revenues start coming in from gold production. There will be a lot of newsflow on tap in the weeks and months to come, as this is a very active time for the company and team at the Madsen Project.
If you have any follow up questions for the team over at West Red Lake Gold please email us at Fleck@kereport.com or Shad@kereport.com.
- In full disclosure, Shad is a shareholder of West Red Lake Gold Mines at the time of this recording.
