TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Junior gold producer Richmont Mines on Thursday reported that ongoing exploration at its flagship Island Gold mine, in Ontario, had confirmed that the orebody extended to 1 200 m below surface.

The Montreal-based miner, which had discovered a 1.1-million-ounce gold deposit beneath its operating Island Gold mine near Wawa, said deep exploration drilling to test part of the down plunge projection of the deposit to the east had returned intersections of 19.87 g/t gold over 3.93 m at a vertical depth of 1 203 m and 7.44 g/t gold over 8.49 m at a vertical depth of 858 m.

Richmont also announced a $7.6-million exploration programme for the Island Gold mine in 2015.

“We are very pleased with recent assay results from our step-out exploration drilling programmes at Island Gold. A hole drilled from surface in December reaffirms the potential for extending our existing deep resource to the east as well as below its currently defined 1 000 m limit,” recently appointed president and CEO Renaud Adams said.

He pointed out that the results reinforced management’s belief that there was potential to grow the deposit both laterally and at depth.

“Our primary objective in 2015 is to unlock the value of Island Gold. To this end, our exploration drilling will focus on lateral expansion of our current resource base, mainly toward the east, with the objective of increasing the number of ounces per vertical metre down to a depth of 1 000 m. [This] would favourably impact our development cost [an] ounce,” Adams noted.

Richmont planned to undertake 61 000 m of exploration drilling at Island Gold this year, mainly to test the eastern extension of the deposit at depths below 600 m, as well as the potential closer to surface to the west and to the east of the existing operations and resource base.

The company had last year appointed a contractor to extend the ramp from the current 635 m level to a depth of 735 m by the end of November, requiring 800 linear metres of ramp development.

The work would enable Richmont to prepare a second mining horizon by the end of 2015, on the 735 m level. The company expected to complete the development of the first mining horizon on the 635 m level early this year.