Abcourt Mines (TSXV: ABI) has officially placed the historic Sleeping Giant mine back on the map with its first gold pour, following two months of development work.The milestone took place on Sept. 11, the Quebec-based gold miner said in a release. The Sleeping Giant site is located in the Eeyou Istchee region, within Canada’s prolific Abitibi Greenstone Belt.Abcourt CEO Pascal Hamelin said the successful gold pour is “just the beginning of what promises to be an exciting chapter” for the company, which holds about a dozen other gold properties in the region.In a separate release from earlier this week, he said the next phase in the project will be to start delivering gold bars to the market in a high gold price environment.Shares of Abcourt traded flat on the news at C$0.08 apiece, for a market capitalization of about C$81 million ($58.5m). This is the highest the stock has traded at over the past 52 weeks.Rebooted gold mineThe milestone marks the first time that the Sleeping Giant mine has produced gold in over a decade. The historic site operated between 1987 and 2014, producing over 1 million oz. of gold. In the ensuing years, Abcourt used the 250,000-tonne-per year process plant to treat ore from nearby mines, and only recently turned on the mill again.In June 2023, the company laid out its plans to restore operations at the mine and mill, eyeing an initial capital investment of C$42 million and an 18-month timeline to completion. A preliminary economic assessment that year estimated an annual production of 30,000 oz. over a mine life of 5.8 years, under the assumption that the mill would only operate at half its capacity.“This project could quickly become the next gold producer in Quebec,” Hamelin said at the time, adding that the next step is to upgrade the resource base at Sleeping Giant. At present, the underground deposit hosts about 173,330 ounces in measured and indicated resources and 248,300 ounces in inferred resources, the company estimates.
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