Argonaut Discovers High-Grade Gold Zones at Ontario Project

Argonaut Gold announced that it has discovered four new high-grade zones below or adjacent to the planned open pit at its development-stage Magino property in Ontario. Since starting the exploration drilling program in July 2019, the company has completed 56 diamond drill holes and approximately 48,000m of drilling targeting high-grade mineralized structures at depth.

“The discovery of these four new high-grade zones below the planned Magino open pit demonstrates the exploration potential of the Magino project. Magino is a past-producing mine and has been a well-known project for decades. But we are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the full potential of the exploration upside to this mineralized system. The fact that we are now discovering new high-grade zones speaks to the future possibilities at Magino. These results continue to demonstrate the high-grade gold potential of the project. Importantly, we have now demonstrated results at depth farther westward from the boundary between Magino and the adjacent Island Gold Mine,” Pete Dougherty, President and CEO, stated in a company press release.

“Through an ongoing structural investigation over the past two years, we can now trace higher-grade ore shoots within the planned open pit and test the down dip potential of these structures. It is very encouraging to intersect high-grade gold mineralization in our initial drill holes testing these structures at depth and we have hit some of the highest grades encountered to date,” added Brian Arkell, Vice President of Exploration.

Argonaut Gold further commented that recent drilling has focused on widely spaced scout drilling to test multiple potential high-grade mineralized structures at depth westward from the Elbow and Central zones. Results indicate that the four high-grade structures continue down dip, as the first drilling to test these down dip extensions has encountered high-grade gold mineralization in all four targets. Drilling will now focus on continuing to test the continuity of the Elbow and Central zones, as well as moving westward to continue testing new targets below and to the west of the planned open pit, the company remarked.

Argonaut Gold’s primary assets are the production-stage El Castillo mine and San Agustin mine, which together form the El Castillo Complex in Durango, and the production-stage in La Colorada mine in Sonora. The company is in a transition phase from a relatively high-cost, short-mine-life producer into a lower-cost, longer-mine-life producer. To accomplish this, Argonaut gold is lowering its operational costs and investing in exploration, the fruits of which can be appreciated at the Magino project. “We are harvesting cash out of existing operations whenever possible. That cash will then be redeployed into exploration and drilling to extend the life of our operations,” Dougherty said during an interview with MBN.

In addition to the Ontario project, the company is developing the Cerro del Gallo gold project in Guanajuato, which will be larger than those it is already running in Mexico. “The project sits on top of 3 million oz identified. The first chunk that we would take out is 1.6 million oz. It will take us 15 years to process that. It is a project with a very long life,” Dougherty added.