Will include full season of various workings toward optimizing future operations.

Banyan Gold Corp. April 18 announced the exploration and technical program planned for the 2024 season at its AurMac gold project in Yukon, Canada, allocating roughly 5,000 meters of drilling that will be strategically focused on economic drivers to optimize a future mine.

Banyan Gold Corp.

After establishing an impressive 7-million-ounce gold resource for AurMac in February, drilling this year aims to demonstrate high-grade mineralization and grade continuity in potential starter pits at the 6.2-million-oz Powerline deposit; test mineralized structures and lithological horizons that control the east-west grade-continuity with Powerline; target holes to demonstrate the scale of and continued expansion of mineral resources at both the Powerline and the Airstrip deposits; and test areas identified for potential infrastructure.

Banyan also plans to conduct metallurgical work to continue to optimize the three conventional mining process flowsheets identified from a successful Phase 1 metallurgy program, including carbon-in-pulp, carbon-in-leach, flotation, and heap leaching.

Furthermore, the company intends to continue scoping level engineering for AurMac to lay the groundwork for future economic studies as well as additional environmental studies.

"AurMac is well positioned in this current gold price environment with a 7-million-ounce gold resource, with near surface mineralization and with existing road and hydro power infrastructure on the property," said Banyan Gold CEO Tara Christie. "In 2024, Banyan will continue to add value through drilling, metallurgy, and engineering to prepare to demonstrate project economics and for the project to be advanced rapidly and efficiently"

Although prep work for economic viability and infrastructure development will be ongoing, exploration work will continue as usual to fully tap into the resource sitting beneath this property roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the village of Mayo, and approximately 356 kilometers (221 miles) from the capital of Yukon, Whitehorse.

Banyan plans to initiate its 2024 drill program in May with two rigs. Drilling objectives will include infill drilling of higher grade near surface areas within the Powerline zone; testing mineralized structures and lithological horizons controlling the east-west grade continuity within the Powerline deposit; test areas identified for potential infrastructure; and target an extension of previously defined gold mineralization at Airstrip, which has not been drill tested since 2020.

The company's metallurgy program will include follow-up studies toward the optimization of three conventional mining processes, focusing on optimization of gold recoveries through expanded test work designed to evaluate various grind sizes and reagent rates along with including gravity recovery in the mill.

Additionally, amenability to pre-concentration test work is being conducted to support future trade-off studies.

As for its internal project scoping and engineering work, the company has been working with consultants to initiate investigations to support the evaluation of the three mining processes being tested with the metallurgical program.

Initial project evaluations will incorporate various throughputs for each process to support definition of the operational parameters used for future economic studies. Moreover, the scoping studies will be used to outline areas for initial engineering field investigations for potential mine infrastructure.

Finally, Banyan has been conducting environmental baseline studies for AurMac since 2021 through the collection of surface water quality, hydrological and meteorological information to compliment the robust data set collected by Hecla Mining Company and Victoria Gold Corp. from their ongoing mining operations on nearby properties.

The company aims to expand the environmental baseline programs for the project this summer, and will include further groundwater investigations to support future permit applications and economic studies.