Property ExpendituresBack to the top

Roycefield Resources spent over $21 million to explore and develop the property between 1992 and 1998. The following table outlines the summary of expenditures. Since their acquisition of the property, VVC Exploration spent an additional $1,757,000 on its drilling program in 2004 and an additional $375,000 is being spent on a current exploration drilling program.

Capital Expenditures Total Spent To Aug '98
Concentrator Mill Construction$5,918,464
Building, Vehicles, Equipment$1,412,286
Tailings Dam, Access Road and Bridge$4,973,149
Electric Power Line$1,528,127
Underground Exploration$2,918,043
Operations
Administration, Head Office and Financing Costs$2,073,526
Supporting Trades$335,554
Mining$492,690
Mining$635,145
Antimony Trioxide Research and Development$1,452,653
Total Project Expenditures$21,739,636
Deposit Types and MineralizationBack to the top

The mine area is underlain by Silurian-Ordovician? sediments consisting of siltstone, sandstone, greywacke and graphitic shale which were formed in a turbidite environment. These sediments strike northeast-southwest, parallel to the axial planes of local scale open folds, and exhibit lower greenschist-facies metamorphism. About 1 km northwest of the mine, the sedimentary rocks are intruded by a large granitoid body the Mount Peyton batholith which consists of gabbro, diorite and monzonite phases. The contact between the Silurian Botwood and the Ordovician turbidites of the Davidsville group is located about 5 km east of the claims.

Rock exposure is very limited on the Beaverbrook property. Geological observations are restricted to the surface stripping done over the Central Zone, the diamond drill core library where all the cores drilled from the West Zone, Central Zone and East Zones are stored in wood trays in steel racks. Rocks and mineralization can also be observed along the 400 meters of drifts and cross cuts on the 9930 and the 9920 levels of the East Zone where the only underground development took place.

The antimony mineralization of the East Zone deposit includes a system of stibnite bearing fault breccias, stockwork fracture zones and fracture zones. A major fracture along the footwall of the zone trends northeast at approximately 0600 which is roughly parallel to the regional bedding strike and dips about 800 to the south cutting the sedimentary rocks and the mineralized zone. On the upper most level (9930 Level) this footwall fault appears to have gently penetrated and displaced a portion of the mineralization. In the limited length of the zone exposed (400 meters of the 1,000 metre long mineralized zone) the brecciation along the footwall fault appears to decrease in intensity east and west to a fracture zone. The antimony veins are generally narrow 5 cm to 15 cm massive stibnite (Sb2S3), the most common antimony ore, with little or no quartz. Vein contacts with the wall rocks are sharp and their sometimes converging hanging and footwall contacts suggest pinching and swelling of the thickness of the veins. Very little antimony is found disseminated in the wall rocks.

The antimony mineralization in the East zone consists of stibnite filling the interstices of a brecciated zone. Spectrographic work carried out by Lakefield Research Laboratories identified abundant silicates and dolomite within the mineralized zones and shows the ore to be free of contaminants.

Rocks on the north side (footwall of the ore zone) are generally medium to thick-bedded, grey to black, greywacke and sandstone. As you get nearer the ore zone the footwall rocks are interbedded with grey to black siltstone and shale. In the hanging wall of the ore zone the black siltstone and shale are more prominent in comparison to the footwall rocks. As you get further into the hanging wall, the rocks grade into red, brown and black shale. Erratic gold values have been obtained with a few antimony samples as well as with minor pyrite mineralization in the hanging wall some distance from the antimony of the East Zone. Of 149 underground chip samples 4 samples returned gold values ranging from 1.57 to 4.63 grams per tonne. The rest of the underground chip samples contained less than 1.0 gram per tonne Au. A total of 56 selected drill holes were reviewed and character samples were assayed for gold. Of the 519 character core samples taken a total of 37 returned gold values ranging between 1.016 and 9.5 grams per tonne. The best values were 9.5 g/t Au over 0.6 m ; 8.94 g/t Au over 0.3 m and 6.6 g/t Au over 2.2 m ( including a section of 8.86 g/t Au over 1.1 m).