By Ryan Pilon

La Ronge Gold Project is in business

Apr 23, 2011 | 7:23 AM

The La Ronge Gold Project is finally producing and selling gold.

Golden Band Resources Inc. announced that as of Apr. 1, the Northern Saskatchewan project had attained commercial production.

“It’s a pretty good feeling,” said Gary Haywood, vice-president of operations.

“We’ve been at this for quite a while, and it certainly is a really good feeling to be Saskatchewan’s newest gold producer.”

In March, the project, located north of La Ronge, produced 3,349 ounces of gold and have produced 6,586 ounces in total as of Apr. 18. Haywood said that is right on track to achieving the company’s goal of reaching 45,000 ounces of gold in its first year.

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The ore is mined underground at the Roy Lloyd Mine, then it is transferred to the Jolu Gold Mill, where it is crushed and a chemical process is performed to extract the gold out of the rock. The gold bars are sold to a refiner in Ontario, and gold is currently trading at $1,500 U.S.

“It feels good to be able to deliver the project to our shareholders. We’ve been saying for a long time we’d turn Golden Band from a junior explorer to a junior gold company and we finally achieved that path to production, so we’re feeling pretty proud of ourselves,” said Haywood.

Haywood said the next step is to expand by bringing in a couple more production sources.

Mobilization has been completed at the EP open pit mine, and waste pre-stripping has begun. It is expected that mining will begin in June.

Golden Band is also pumping water out of the Komis underground mine, which will take about two months to complete. Then, Golden Band will begin exploration drilling, before putting the mine into production later in the year.

rpilon@panow.com