According to the company, more than 1.4 million hours have been worked at the site without a lost time incident.
The open pit benches have been established and more than 1.3Mt has already been mined. A 69kV powerline from the Yukon grid has been energised; 200 employees have been hired, 50% of which are from Yukon.
Current activities on site are focused on completing remaining mechanical, electrical and instrumentation installations at the secondary/tertiary crushing facility and the overland conveyor. Commissioning activities are well advanced at the primary crusher, conveying systems and gold recovery plant.
The original schedule had the first ore delivery to the heap leach pad planned for August 2019. Victoria Gold currently believes the team can beat this schedule by nearly one month, with first ore reporting to the heap leach pad during the first half of July. In doing so, the company is currently targeting a first gold pour in September.
With the acceleration of the construction schedule, over 3Mt of ore will be delivered to the heap leach pad by the end of 2019.
"Construction of the Eagle Gold Mine is nearing completion ahead of schedule and the operations team is ready to take advantage by advancing additional ore delivery to the heap leach pad in 2019," stated John McConnell, president and CEO of Victoria Gold. "With gold approaching an all-time high in Canadian dollar terms, 70% of our costs in Canadian dollars, and first gold production in September, Victoria is perfectly timed to become Canada's next gold producer."
