A Hong Kong investment firm is backstopping an exploration program by Gowest Gold to grow the gold base at its North Timmins Project outside Timmins.
Gowest announced it’s secured a $10-million loan from Greenwater Investment Hong Kong to launch a new drilling program at its Bradshaw Mine development site and on its 100-square-kilometre land parcel, some 30 kilometres north of the city.
The lender, Greenwater, is a major shareholder of Gowest at 26 per cent.
Development of the Bradshaw underground project has endured a series of start-and-stop hiccups over the years. The latest setback being a management decision in November to halt mine construction work to preserve cash.
Instead, for this winter, the focus is on exploration to expand upon its current 1.17 million ounces of indicated and inferred gold. Bradshaw already contains a gold reserve of 277,000 ounces, grading 4.82 grams per tonne within 1.8 million tonnes.
In November, Gowest wrapped up a 5,000-metre, 16-hole campaign. The company recorded 10 “significant” gold hits in three holes. The highest grade intersection yielded 8.12 grams per tonne gold over a 2.5-metre length of drill core.
To follow that up, the $10 million is to queue up a 16,500-metre drill program to test gold zones around and below the Bradshaw deposit, and over to the west.
The loan agreement comes with strings attached.
Gowest will be funded in monthly tranches until October 2024. Each tranche is conditional on Gowest reaching certain milestones set out in the exploration plan and the budget agreed to with Greenwater,
Gowest also announced the appointment of Fuhua Zhou, a trained engineer in geology, who has worked in China’a mining industry for 30 years. He is currently the general manager of Inner Mongolia Yinshi Industrial Company.
In a statement, Gowest President-CEO Dan Gagnon said the loan from Greenwater “clearly demonstrates their faith” in Gowest’s ability to expand the gold resource at the deposit. “As we continue to prepare to return to mining at Bradshaw (when?), we are progressing our exploration work both at Bradshaw and to further test other parts of the NTGP, where we have already intercepted gold mineralization.”
He said his team anticipates an exciting year ahead.