McEwen Mining Inc. has achieved commercial production at the Gold Bar mine in Nevada, USA. Production guidance for 2019 is 50,000 gold ounces at an AISC of $975/ounce.
Gold recoveries from the heap leach are tracking well compared to the feasibility study design criteria and production is steadily increasing since the first gold pour on February 16, the company said.
President and COO Chris Stewart said, “The Gold Bar mine is performing as designed. This summer we will be making modifications to the ore crushing and stacking system to mitigate the impact of challenging winter weather like we had in 2018/2019, which was the wettest winter ever recorded in the United States.
“Under the leadership of our new General Manager Jack Henris, our team at Gold Bar is focused on identifying and implementing operational enhancements to increase our daily throughput. I’m pleased to see that the mine has operated at 125% of our planned 7,200 tons per day production rate on several days during the past month.”
Henris recently joined McEwen to drive operational improvement, the company said. He has more than 30 years of experience, most recently as the vice president of mining and geotechnical at Goldcorp.
McEwen Mining has gold and silver producing mines in Nevada, Canada, Mexico and Argentina and a large copper deposit in Argentina.