Golden Dawn to reactivate B.C. mill, shares up 43%
Golden Dawn Minerals Inc. [GOM-TSXV, GDMRD-OTC PINK, 3G8C-Frankfurt] rallied sharply in active trading Wednesday after the company said it plans to initiate refurbishment of its mill near Greenwood in southeastern British Columbia.
The purpose is for toll milling of material from surrounding mines.
The company said the process plant facility is a key component for potential production from surrounding precious metals deposits, including Golden Dawn’s Lexington and Golden Crown gold-copper mines as well as its Macy May gold-silver mine and Deadwood deposits.
Other candidates on the list include Ximen Mining Corp.’s [XIM-TSXV] Kenville mine, GGX Gold Corp.’s [GGX-TSXV, GGXXF-OTC] Gold Drop property and Belmont Resources Inc.’s [BEA-TSXV, L3L1-Frankfurt] Lone Star mine.
Golden Dawn said it has now received permits to restart the mill and receive material from the Lexington Mine.
Golden Dawn shares advanced on the news, rising 43% or $0.06 to 20 cents on volume of 2.38 million. The shares previously traded in a 52-week range of 20 cents and 10.5 cents.
The mill consists of a permitted, modern crushing-grinding-gravity flotation facility with a process plant rated at 200 tonnes-per-day capacity, assay laboratory and tailing facilities
“The process equipment has been kept under care and maintenance since December, 2008, and remains in good condition,” the company said in a press release.
The facility was built in 2007 and operated for eight months. It processed material from the Lexington-Grenoble Mine, with production of 5,418 ounces gold, 3,196 ounces of silver and 861,281 pounds of copper from 53,782 tonnes processed.
The plant produced two marketable products: a gravity-gold concentrate and gold-copper concentrate. Both products were trucked from site to Vancouver. The gravity concentrate was refined for dore bars before being sold and concentrate was marketed to a commodities purchaser.
The mill closed in December 2008 in part because of the global financial crisis and lack of financing.
Refurbishment of the process plant facility and crushing equipment is required to prepare for operation and processing. The following key items have been identified as required for re-furbishing the existing processing facilities.
They include refurbishment of crusher and plant equipment and the completion of environment management plans as required for Mines Act permit, as well as an application for an environment discharge permit.
Once the facility is operational at its current capacity, engineering design works for increasing the tailings facility capacity and for permitting an up rade of the plant to handle 400 tonnes per day will be considered.
This would involve the design and construction of one or more raises to the final tailings dam height and/or possible installation of a dry-stack tailings system, installation of an additional ball mill or a larger capacity mill, and additions to the gravity and flotations circuits.