Business
Production at ATO Gold Mine Passes 15,000 Oz Gold in First Three Months Commercial Production Achieved
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 6, 2020) - Steppe Gold Limited (TSX: STGO) ("St...
About this update from Steppe Gold Ltd.
[{"type":"text","content":"Production at ATO Gold Mine Passes 15,000 Oz Gold in First Three Months Commercial Production AchievedUlaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 6, 2020) - Steppe Gold Limited (TSX: STGO) (\"Steppe Gold\" or \"the Company\") is extremely pleased to provide an update on its production ramp up at its 100% owned ATO Gold Mine in Mongolia.The Company made its first gold sales starting on April 23 and gold and silver is being produced and sold every 14 days.To date, the Company has now sold a total of 15,389 oz of gold and 4,978 oz of silver, in six separate deliveries. This has generated net cash flow, after royalty payments, of US$25.3 million. Average achieved gold price for the sales to date is $1725.The Company achieved commercial production in the second quarter just completed with all operations and facilities running to plan and all relevant metrics met.As at June 30 the Company has mined, crushed and stacked approximately 715,000t of ore onto Cell 1 where leaching continues.A further 160,000t of ore has been delivered to the ROM pad and is being crushed and stacked. Stacking of ore at Cell 2 has already commenced and leaching will begin in July.Regular grade reconciliations continue to show strong outperformance to the published resource estimate with average grades of 2g/t and some evidence of higher grade zonesDaily mining of ore continues from the ATO1 open cut with the ATO4 open cut being brought on-line in the coming months. Both the mining and stacking rates are being scaled up.Despite the COVID-19 travel restrictions and border closing, Steppe Gold is continuing its operations without any material changes affecting the Company.Preliminary Operational Statistics are shown below:Q1 2020 Apr-20May-20Jun-20Q2 2020 YTDYTDOre mined (t) 544 900 108 648 129 454 92 222 875 225 Ore stacked (t) 534 501 82 675 44 604 53 611 715 391 Au produced (oz)[1] - 2 500 5 202 7 687 15 389 Ag produced (oz) - 674 1 356 2 948 4 978  The Company remains on track to produce approximately 60,000 ounces of gold in its first year of production at cash costs of circa $500 per ounce from the ATO Mine. With strong cash generation from the ATO Mine the Company is now working on expanding the open pit and processing facilities to increase gold production to a targeted 150,000 ounces of gold per annum. Exploration drilling continues at ATO1, ATO4...