North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Victoria Gold Corp. July 5 announced that its Eagle Gold Mine in Canada's Yukon produced 45,568 ounces of gold during its second quarter of 2023 and a cumulative of 83,188 oz gold during its first half – a nearly 50% increase from 2022 production.

Kicking off the year with a strong start, Victoria announced its first quarter produced 37,619 oz of gold, compared to the 24,358 oz of gold produced during Q1 2022. The company says the 55% increase in gold production was attributed to higher gold inventory on the heap leach pad and improved heap leach pad operations over the winter period.

Generally, gold production at heap leach operations such as Eagle lags behind mining, crushing, and ore stacking.

With the usual operational plan over the last few years, including the curtailment of ore stacking from January through March, the coldest months of the Yukon winter, gold production at Eagle has been weighted toward the second half of the year.

Now, however, the company has begun catching up to its targeted production by redoubling efforts on heap leach operations.

"2023 is off to a very good start at the Eagle Gold Mine," said Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell during the production announcement. "During previous years, the mine underwent a period during the winter where no ore was stacked on the heap leach pad. We have now proven that year-round stacking is feasible and this has resulted in record first quarter production, including ore tonnes mined and stacked on the heap leach pad as well as gold production."

Keeping up the production values, the second quarter also saw an increase from the year prior. Producing 45,568 oz of gold, compared to the 32,055 oz of 2022, the company has shown that its new operating procedure is a correct action.

With a combined total of 83,188 oz of gold produced in the first half of the year, the company produced 47% more gold than last year.

"In Q2 2023, we continued with the record gold production we achieved in Q1," said McConnell. "Over H1 2023, we have produced 47% more gold than H1 2022."

With the first two quarters of the year completed, and with numbers similar to its latter half of the year historically and the best six months of Eagle Gold production to go, there is a possibility that Victoria will achieve its coveted 250,000 oz produced for the year.