RE:Annual Information Form and Updated NI 43-101 SilentRiver,
Patience will be rewarded on this stock IMHO. The good news just keeps coming.
Comparing the 2020 mine plan for the Bjorkdal mine in Sweden with the 2021 mine plan, here are the differences:
- Underground production which was scheduled to end in 2026 gets an added year of production.
- Open pit mining which had been scheduled to resume in 2023 will now start in 2024 and continue until 2029, adding a full year to the previous mine life.
- Underground ore scheduled to be mined in 2021 was increased from 812,000 tonnes/yr to 960,000 tonnes/yr, while the long term stockpile tonnage was decreased from 488,000 tonnes/yr to 340,000 tonnes/yr.
- Mined ore grade increased from 2.01 g/t to 2.09 g/t. Average budgeted head grade ins 2020 was 1.24 g/t, while in 2021 the average budgeted head grade is 1.51 g/t.
The good news is that gold production per the new mine plan is estimated to be 6,000 ounces higher than last year's mine plan. Based on Figure 13-6 in the NI 43-101 report dated March 25, 2021, my estimate for Q1 2021 gold production is 14,126 ounces with a milled head grade of 1.54 g/t.
Average quarterly gold production at Bjorkdal should be 15,750 ounces in 2021, with the average gold grades increasing during the year.
Back in June 2019, the high grade Aurora zone cross section at Bjorkdal was 450 meters west to east by 300 meters in the vertical. As of the lastest exploration news release dated November 24, 2020 the Aurora zone has grown to 700 meters west to east by 600 meters in the vertical . And in this news release, we learn from Figure 2, that there are already 4 production stopes at Aurora, and that the Aurora zone is open up plunge and down plunge and open to the east.
15 additional apparently high-grade gold ore veins exist alongside Aurora with 0.59 meters of 38.7 g/t gold at DOD2020-074 and 0.37 meters of 31.7 g/t gold at DOD2020-075. Additional extremely high grade results were reported in the February 17, 2021 news release including:
- 92.2 g/t gold over a true width of 0.40 meters at MU20-021,
- 32.5 g/t gold over a true width of 1.1 meters at MU20-021,
- 119.2 g/t gold over a true width of 0.44 meters at MU20-023, and
- 58.5 g/t gold over a true width of 0.32 meters at MU20-025.
Management's comment as stated in the second to last paragraph on page 2 of this NR:
"The results of the drilling in this area suggest the possibility of a significant increase in the development life of the Bjorkdal mine by providing a new mining area beyond the current workings on the Main zone and Aurora." Bjorkdal is looking more and more like another Costerfield. No wonder Mr. Duffy is looking to expand throughput from 1.3 million tonnes per year to 1.7 million tonnes per year!