The next company is West Red Lake Gold Mines, and presenting West Red Lake Gold Mines is going to be Shane Williams, President and CEO.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Shane Williams. I'm the President and CEO of West Red Lake Gold Mines, and also founder of the company. Quickly looking at some forward-looking statements. Basically now we're the newest gold producer in Canada this year. We went into commercial production in January of this year. We've produced into production and we're still in ramp-up basically. We produced about 20,000 oz last year in the first part of ramp-up. We ramped up the project. We put it back into production. You can see sort of the sales price and the revenue we generated. The history of this asset was, this was an asset that was put into production by a previous operator. It had some challenges. It went into bankruptcy. They built a full mine. It's a full operation. They were in operation. They went to commercial production.
Basically, they had technical challenges. They took on a lot of debt, and they had some COVID, as COVID was there. Basically, they went into bankruptcy, and CAD 350 million had been spent on this asset, and we basically bought it out of bankruptcy for CAD 6 million. Basically, one of the main technical challenges of this project was understanding of the ore body. These ore bodies in Red Lake are high grade, but they're very narrow vein, and you need to do a lot of work. In order, we've done 200,000 m of drilling underground in the last 18 months, very tightly spaced drilling, 6 m centers underground, basically very tight spaced drilling at CAD 200 million. Basically for that, after we've done all that, earlier in 2025, we put together this bulk sample.
We took samples from underground from a number of areas, and then we ran them through our mill. You can see our mill, brand new mill in place, and we basically got full reconciliation on the project from gold produced to ounces in the model. We're just getting started, really. As I said, the first half of this year is continuing the ramp-up. As we go into second half, we'll get to the full run rate, and then we have. I'll get into some details, but we have a lot of opportunity to grow in Red Lake. We're the only developer in Red Lake that has a mill in place, and the idea is we have a number of other projects that we can feed into the Madsen Mill and grow the company over time on this hub-and-spoke model in Red Lake. Talk about the valuations.
You can see we're just getting started. You can see sort of different valuations from organic growth producers and developing. We've just gone into production in early January this year. Again, a little bit on the history. We're in Red Lake region of Ontario. It's a very prolific mining area. Some of the key companies there was, that was where the Goldcorp original Red Lake mine that built Goldcorp effectively. High-grade areas. Kinross Great Bear was in that region as well. Kinross had bought that, so it's a very desirable area for large companies. We're the only developer in that region. We have two projects. We have the Rowan project and Madsen.
Madsen was the project we bought out of bankruptcy, effectively, with everything in place, and so it gives us the opportunity to consolidate the region and bring material from our Rowan deposit and other deposits in the region to our Madsen mill to grow there. There's a pathway for us to 150,000 oz / year in Red Lake, just in that area. Just a little bit around. There's other areas you can see behind all those different areas there. These other projects that are potentially there, they're higher grade, small mines, basically, or small past producers that are too small to develop a full project, a full mine. Because we have the facilities there, we have the opportunity to pick up those opportunities and feed them into the Madsen mill.
Again, this is a technical approach of the ore body, why it failed, and mainly it was the underground drilling and the resource that they didn't understand. It's a tightly spaced drilling. This was when it was called a company called PureGold. It was a darling of the stock market. It was very high valued. It went high valued. It was a lot of lack of understanding and just went back into bankruptcy during the time. Again, remember from a point of view of the current gold price, they needed to produce at $1,900 / oz. Now, it's a different sort of market today where we are, how much they need to produce to make the mine work versus how much we need to produce and sort of the margins on that margin. Again, I went into this.
This is our bulk sampling approach that we did. We did a full bulk sample, a number of different stopes across the mine. We ran the material through our mill, we produced ounces, and we showed a full reconciliation. Since that was done early last year, we've been up and running mining, and every single stope and area we do, we do a full reconciliation to make sure that our work, the work we've done, the drilling we've done.
The model is working, the geology is working. That was the main technical risk associated with this project. There's a lot of concern out there on this asset. Is the gold there? Was it there, Pure Gold? That was the issue they had. They had lots of challenges. With all the drilling we've done and the work we've done, we believe that we've solved the problem. You can see the full reconciliation.
Since that time, we've been mining for 12 months now, with full reconciliation on our adit project. You can see we've also put in a lot of capital projects in place. We put in a new camp, new mine dry. We bought a lot of new equipment, a lot of investment to set the project up for operations. You can see sort of all development we've done into the mine, different areas. There is a shaft on the project, so there is a full mill, et cetera. There's a shaft on the project. That shaft goes down at 1,200 m into the project. We've dewatered all the way down. There's 26 levels on the shaft. We've dewatered all the way down to level 17. We've done all that new development. You can see there that that's all West Red Lake's development. We've joined up two pieces of the mine.
There's two portals and that it wasn't there historically. We've put that in to allow efficiency of moving material and developing the project. Again, there is a shaft. We are renovating that shaft at the moment. That shaft is a game changer from a cost perspective and moving material. It was a shaft that was there, was never used by the old-timers who had this mine. This mine ran for 32 years in the 1930s to the 1960s. It produced 2 million oz at 9 g-10 g. It is a past producer in a different sort of gold environment. I get into a little bit of the details. Obviously, there was a lot of concern on this mine that it was a high-grade, narrow vein, sort of remnant mine around cut and fill stopes and small production.
With the work that we've done and the work that the team have done, we've transformed this mine. It's a long-hole open stope mine now, basically, given the drilling we've done, the understanding of the mine, which allows us to do more production, more areas. As an example, these are two areas with before drilling and after drilling. The grade is increasing and the tonnage is increasing and that is as we're doing the work going through the project. Madsen is very high grade. This is the benefit of these mines in Canada. They're basically high grade. You can see some of our hits we've had across different areas of the project. Last year we drilled an area called our 4447 area. You can see the sort of grades we've got there.
Very high grade, and more importantly, not just high grade, but widths, good mining widths in that area. That's our 4447 area that's outlined there. That's basically all of last year's drilling, some of the main hits and the opportunity. One of the challenges of the previous operators, they never got down into the deep of the system. We're down at level 12, level 13. They were in the McVeigh Zone, was an area up there, and they never got down deep into the system. They never got the development done. They never got the drills down into the system. They never got ahead of themselves because they never got development. This is an area we drilled last year. We're mining that now in the second half of second quarter and third quarter. We've gone in there, we drilled it all last year.
We put it together, mine plan, and we're mining that now, this quarter going forward. Again, just sort of the steps that we did. We did a pre-feasibility study last year on the project. Since that time, we've done 200,000 m of drilling. All that data, that's definition drilling. All that data needs to go into the project where we have another deposit called the Fork deposit, and we have a Rowan deposit, and then we're growing these areas as we go. All that, we're doing an updated pre-feasibility study the back half of this year, where we'll bring all that together in a new gold environment and present that as the growth path forward. This is our Fork opportunity. This is a satellite deposit on our property that we're using.
As you can see over in the corner there, it's not very far from the existing mine. It's non-remnant. It's a new area. There's about 60,000 oz-70,000 oz there defined already. You can see again, high grade hits very close to surface. We're currently developing to that area, and so that's a 2027 production story, basically. We're developing it now. That'll be part of the mine plan in 2027. Again, the concept of this asset is when the previous operator had it, they went into one area and they lived and died by one area, basically. Our concept is to develop a number of different areas with smaller mines feeding our mill. Our mill is 800 tons / day, but it can go to 1,500 tons / day. It was designed, it has that capability to ramp up.
If you have lots of smaller mines feeding in, that's how you get your scale if they're high grade. The first one is Fork we're developing. We also have a Rowan property, which is another project we have. We're drilling that at the moment. We've developed that. It's very close to surface. There's currently 400,000 oz on that project defined. It's very high grade, but as you can see, it's open at depth. A lot of good definition. This is the design of that. This only needs to be a small underground mine, but the material can be brought to Madsen. We can expand the Madsen mill. We have tailings permitting. That's the concept there as we develop.
We'd have Fork, we have Rowan, we have other satellites feeding into Madsen, which allow that Madsen mill to grow, and that's how you get the scale in production, rather than just focus on one area. This is really the opportunity. This is the Madsen Mine, basically shows the depth potential. The shaft, which is the 8 Zone there, that goes all the way down. That's 1,200 m of a shaft all the way down into the project. We're dewatering all the way down. The 8 Zone is a very special zone. It has about 200,000 oz at 15 g, basically, deep in the system. Just to give some context, in these systems in Red Lake, it's owned by Evolution now. It was the Goldcorp. Down at that depth and below, they discovered a high-grade zone in Red Lake, which really transformed the Red Lake mine.
We're mining. I talked about the 4447. I talked about the 904 area, but you can see we're very still high up in the system. We've a long way to go, and it's very open at depth. We have done seismic surveys down to 2.5 km, basically, of this mine. This extends a lot deeper. The bottom of the shaft is 1,200 m, and Evolution is currently mining the Red Lake mine down to 3,000 m, basically. They're all the way down. These systems go deep and very high grade. To give you a sort of analogy you're probably familiar with Island Gold. That's owned by Alamos. Alamos bought Island a long time, a number of years ago. It was a small underground mine. They've drilled it, they've gone deeper, and it's grown into one of the best mines in Canada now.
Very similar sort of operation. You can see there, as I said, you can see our Fork zone, where Fork is there as well. We have another project out there called Starratt-Olsen. Again, an old past producer. Lots of good hits out there, and that's what we're developing as well. You'd have four to five different areas feeding into our Madsen mill to give us that production growth. Again, this is our 4447 area, what I talked about with the high-grade hits in those areas. The other area we've just come into is this area called 904. We had some spectacular drill results put out on Monday this week, and very high grade. This is a new area. We had 4447 I talked about last year. This area is the 904 we're talking about now this year.
This is an area of the old Madsen Mine that was never mined, and it's down at that level, and it'll be drilled this year, and then it'll be mined the year after. Our drill results came out some spectacular grades, 200 g over 7 m or 8 m, sort of, numbers in that area. It has never been mined. It's a brand-new area of the mine. The old-timers, they left that area because they used it for all ventilation shafts, et cetera. That's a big area now that we understand, and we've gone in there and started to drill. Another opportunity, again, we're working on is a whole area of the mine called Derelict Zone. That was an old area that none of the other groups were, and we're doing the decline to drill that area. There's lots of optionality in that area to grow.
You can see the resource potentials of those areas that's been developed already from our drilling and in our resource model. As we get over there and drill those out, we expect those to grow. I'm just giving the concept. We have lots of four or five different areas, mining zones, to feed our Madsen Mill, basically. We can expand our mill to 1,500 tons / day from where we are today to 1,500 tons / day. There's a pathway to 150,000 oz / year that we've defined within Madsen, Rowan and Fork. That's 150,000 oz. Within the region, there's lots of other opportunities to grow to 200,000 oz and above, basically. In that region itself, there's big companies that people know that have big deposits, and that are there ready to go, that have never been mined before.
One of them has 100,000,000 oz and 9 g sitting right beside our project. That's one we can buy. It would never be a mine on its own. It's too small. It wouldn't support it. That gives us the opportunity to take that and build a big complex. We see a complex approach to 200,000 oz in Red Lake, which is highly valuable. Again, just a little bit more to give you an example. This is the Lower Campbell Zone. This was known as the high-grade zone with Red Lake. Basically built the project of Red Lake. Just to give you, it's at the same depth as our 8 Zone, but it just shows you that very similar to us, they had an early-stage project. They drilled it out before, and it grew completely into a large area of the drilling they've done in Lower Campbell.
They added a lot of ounces very quickly from that definition drilling, which we're finding now as well. Again, just wanted to show you the depth potential of this project. Very similar. That's the Goldcorp mine there. That was the old Goldcorp mine. The discovery, the high-grade zone, if you see where the high-grade zone was discovered, marked in red there. If you look at where we are, our 8 Zone, sort of the scale and potential. Very similar. Island Gold, if you took Island Gold and mapped it, very similar structure, very similar high grade. We're only in the top 1,200 m, and we know the ore body continues. So this would be a very high-grade, long-life mine over time. You can see it's very open at depth. At depth, there's been some drills all the way down.
The bottom of the 8 Zone continues, we believe, and all those areas continue down, and the drilling supports that. Again, across the property, we have a large property there where the Madsen Mine is. Lots of exploration upside across that whole property to grow the project in place. Just a little bit on our team. My background is mining. I worked with Eldorado Gold for a long time building mines. I was very successful. I bought the Lamaque project for Eldorado, and we put Lamaque project into production, very similar to Madsen. We bought Madsen and brought it into production. Our share structure. Currently we have some institutions in VanEck, we have Xtrackers, we have Ruffer is a big part of the story, and our market cap is around CAD 400 million-CAD 500 million. It was before the last tariff war.
One of the things we have is very, very strong liquidity. We have a lot of liquidity. People talk about liquidity, but we have very strong liquidity compared to our peers. That's high level of West Red Lake and Madsen Mine, if there's any questions.
Maybe we have time for one quick question, if there's any questions in the audience. Maybe I'll ask one very quickly. I've got plenty of questions here, but maybe I'll just stick to one. In terms of the issue that Madsen had.
Yeah.
Previously with the previous operators, obviously the whole situation was lack of development, lack of drilling.
Yeah.
In terms of what you guys have done so far in terms of drilling development, how far ahead of production are you, and how much confidence you have in terms of the?
In order to do these mines properly, you need to be at least a year and a half ahead of yourself. They never got ahead of themselves. You have to do your development, you have to drill your area, then you have to do your design, then you actually mine it. We're now into the area. First you have to dewater the mine. We're mining at level 13. We've dewatered all the way down to level 17, if I go there. We're mining in level 12 and 13 now, but those 904 and that 4447 was last year, we're mining it this year, 904, we're drilling it this year. We're 15 months to 17 months ahead of ourself. From reserve, there's resources defined, 1.7 million oz. We're doing the updated study.
I suspect we'll get close to 1,000,000 oz of reserve but having that two years ahead of ourselves on the mine design. That's really one of the fundamental reasons they never got ahead of themselves, because they were trying to push into production, and they didn't get the scale and size.
Perfect. That increases the confidence for sure. Thank you very much, Shane.
Thank you very much.