Trade Winds Ventures Inc TSXV:TWD in joint venture with Detour Gold Corp TSX:DGC announced assays from the Block A Joint Venture Project in northeastern Ontario. Results include 61.11 g/t gold over 2 metres (including 113 g/t over 1 metre), 4.37 g/t over 15 metres (including 127 g/t over 0.3 metres), 27.83 g/t over 2.5 metres (including 53.1 g/t over 1 metre) and 10.23 g/t over 5.2 metres (including 46.5 g/t over 1 metre). The two companies each hold 50% of the operation while Trade Winds is the project operator.
Trade Winds President/CEO Ian Lambert tells ResourceClips.com, “Block A is directly adjacent and on-trend with Detour Gold. Detour is putting into production the largest pure gold mine in Canada at 14.9 million ounces. They’re under construction now on a $1-billion infrastructure development. Our property is directly adjacent to Detour’s; our theoretical pit would be within a few hundred metres of theirs. We’ve been developing a Block A resource over the last few years. We’ve drilled 156,000 metres to date. We have, on the last resource—updated at the beginning of the year—a total resource on Block A of 4.4 million ounces.
“The purpose of this drill program was to do a combination of infill drilling and exploration drilling. The theoretical pit was developed from the computer models of the resource update, containing within it 2.7 million ounces. Twenty-five percent to 30% was in the inferred category—which is the lower confidence level. A lot of data gaps existed within the pit; areas we hadn’t drilled yet because it wasn’t drilled in a systematic pattern from east to west. We have to go back and infill-drill all the missing areas. So, of the 69 completed holes, probably almost three quarters of those were within and around the pit area. Almost every single hole, except the one extending it to the west, is at least in some part within the pit boundary: at depth or at surface. A lot of the periphery was completely waste rock, purely because there had been no drilling at all on those areas. So we’ve got a zone up the middle [of the pit] and on the north and south sides of it; there’s just empty rock because we haven’t drilled. So a lot of the drilling went into that area to turn it into ore.
We’re all thinking that this is not a matter of will this go to production, but of which way we are going to take it to production. —Ian Lambert
“The results that we announced today are really typical—it’s the third batch of results we’ve put out—and the consistency is really quite amazing. Every time we put a drill hole in, there are numerous intercepts, some narrow, some wider, but they all occur within the pit boundaries, and will all add new ounces to the resource total once we update it.
“We expect that this [drill campaign] will do several things. First of all, it will infill and turn inferred into indicated. It’ll take gap areas that are currently waste rock and turn them into at least inferred, if not higher. It’ll take the newer areas—the outer periphery—and lengthen the pit, potentially widen it, and turn a lot of waste rock into ore. I would imagine most of that would be inferred at this point in time, because it’ll take tighter drilling to move it up to indicated.
“We’ve done 30,000 metres of drilling so far this year,” Lambert continues. “We’re working on a program right now for approval from the joint committee, which includes ourselves of course, to do a further 20,000 metres of drilling in the second half of the year. Because some of the area is swampy, some of the targets are questionable. So we’re going to build perhaps a larger program, but we probably won’t be able to do all of it because of physical access issues. We’ll do our best. We’re also sitting on 10,000 metres in and around the pit area of previously drilled core that hasn’t been sampled yet. So we’ll also try to process that this year. So it’ll be close to 60,000 metres with the new data if we do everything. At the end of the year it’ll go into a resource update and into another version of the block model, which we feel will grow substantially based on what we’re seeing so far. It’s yet to be determined of course, but we’re quite confident that it’ll add a lot of ounces. And we’re fully expecting to do a preliminary economic assessment. That would be done in the first two quarters of 2012, after the resource model has been updated.
“The PEA would study two scenarios. One is the economics of developing a stand-alone mill operation on the Block A property. The other scenario would be looking at processing the ore from Block A through the mill facility at Detour Gold, if Detour decides to expand their mill there. They’re studying the expansion of the mill, even though they’re still constructing the original one.
“The joint venture is working well right now. I think that we’re all aligned in terms of the direction this property needs to be developed. I think that they’re fully supportive of doing the work that we’re recommending because we’re recommending the right approach. They obviously would like to see this thing get to a point where it’s got an economic confirmation. Whether it will be [scenario] A or B is yet to be determined. I think that we’ve got to the point now where we’re all thinking that this is not a matter of will this go to production, but of which way we are going to take it to production.
“We’re fortunate to have a good project in a geopolitically friendly, mining friendly jurisdiction. The next thing that gives us a great advantage is that Detour Gold has done a lot of leg work in the area. It ranges from a thorough understanding of the metallurgy, through to dealing with the aboriginal agreements that are in place for that region and dealing with the community issues. We’ll have an awful lot of education coming from Detour going forward.
“Trade Winds has not received a full valuation and represents a good opportunity for investors to take advantage of a project that’s actually going to make it to production. Those are few and far between in the junior resource sector. And if somebody evaluates our per-ounce, in-ground resource compared to many of the transactions that have occurred over the last year or two, they’ll find that we’re significantly undervalued. And there’s a lot of upside on the new ounces we believe we’ll be able to add based on the work we’ve done.”
Lambert concludes, “We’re in a good area, and I think that the possibility of this pit going into several more million ounces exists.”
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Contact:
Trade Winds Ventures Inc
Ian D. Lambert
CEO/President
416.840.9843
http://resourceclips.com/2011/06/09/trade-winds-detour-report-ontario-gold-results-of-61-11-gt-over-2m/
