Golden Heart mine. Photo courtesy goldenbandresources.com
It’s been more than two years since a La Ronge gold mining operation laid off 120 employees, and it seems the company is no closer to telling the public if those jobs will ever open again.
The CEO of Golden Band Resources, Paul Saxton says they’re still regrouping after losing millions, including $27 million during the 2013 fiscal year alone. The losses led to an “indefinite” shutdown of mining operations in late 2013.
The hemorrhaging of its funds continued, with the 2014 fiscal year seeing a net loss of more than $107.6 million. That number is down to $28.3 million in 2015, but Saxton is hesitant to say that things will ever get started again.
“We’d like to think we’d be able to get going again but boy there’s no promises,” Saxton said, adding that “putting a date on it is impossible for me at this time.”
Since Golden Band went into “care and maintenance mode” with its operations in late 2013, the open-pit mines and mill in the La Ronge-area remain idle with only maintenance workers on site. Despite the standstill, the company has continued to issue news releases.
The releases indicate that Golden Band’s focus is on exploration work, something Saxton said is necessary. A solid, profitable plan needs to zone in on gold deposits, he said, and they will not start up operations until they know they’ll be profitable.
“If you can’t produce the product to cover your costs then how do you carry on? We’re saying ‘okay, we’ve got shareholders, we’ve got an operation that’s been in care and maintenance. How do we get that going so the shareholders are looked after and we can employ some people up north?” he said.
He noted the lay-offs are something the company never plans to repeat, and provide yet another reason to tread carefully.
Even if the company finds more gold and a cost-effective way to mine it, they need the start-up money to get that going again. Saxton says they’re swimming upstream right now. Investment is down in the mining industry across the board, and the price of gold hasn’t gone up too much since the late 2013 shutdown.
Despite all this, Saxton said he is confident there’s gold in the area. But right now he says they haven’t figured out the best way to get to it.
“The only thing I know is that it’s got a lot of potential and someday somebody, whether it’s us or somebody else would be back in there,” he said, noting that other companies in the area have been successful at extracting gold.
Saxton said those companies have “got properties, have got resources in the area, have done some explorations. Maybe there’s some way to tie things together there, maybe there isn’t.”
No matter what shape the company takes in the future, it’s quite clear it won’t follow the same methods of the past. A July 2015 news release stated mine development has taken a backseat to priority areas around the Bingo deposit, an area around Jolu Mill, and some other spots.
Golden Band has seen many directors resign in the past year, and a few new appointments.
“Sometimes you reorganize a company just to make sure that if you can reorganize something that it moves forward in a better way than it did before,” Saxton said.