West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. is a publicly traded gold company focused on its flagship Madsen Mine in the Red Lake Gold District, a Canadian gold district that has yielded over 30 million ounces of gold in the last 100 years. West Red Lake purchased the Madsen Mine out of bankruptcy in 2023, spent two years developing a reliable resource modelling-mine engineering workflow and building infrastructure essential for efficient operations, and mining a bulk sample. Operations ramped up in H2 2025, setting Madsen up to declare commercial production at the start of 2026 as a rare new gold mine in a rising gold market.
Looking ahead: West Red Lake plans to complete a new Prefeasibility Study in 2026 that paves the way for gold production at Madsen double from its starting rate of approximately 45,000 oz. per year in just a few years by developing the nearby Rowan deposit as a satellite mine, while also expanding operations at Madsen. Exploration will happen alongside to test the clear potential to find more gold on the 47-sq. km Madsen land package, which is under explored and brimming with opportunity.
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The next company is West Rid Lake Gold Mines, and presenting Westlake Gold Mines is gonna be Shane Williams, president and CEO. Yeah. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. this is, my name is Shane Williams. I'm the president CEO of Westside Lake Gold Mine and also the founder of the company. So, quickly looking at some forward-looking statements. Basically, now we're the newest gold producer in Canada this year. We're, we went into commercial production in January of this year. We've produced Into production and we're still in ramp up basically so we produced about 20,000 ounces 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. They they 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 $350 million had been spent on this asset and we basically bought it out of bankruptcy for $6 million basically. So 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. And so we have 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. $200 million and then basically for that after we've done all that earlier in 25 we put together this bulk sample we took samples of 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 to ramp up. As we go into the 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, and so we've just gone into production in early January this year. So again, a little bit on the history, we're in Red Lake region of Ontario. It's a very, very prolific mining area. Some of the key companies there that was where the Gold Corp original Red Lake M that built Gold Corp effectively, high grade areas. Kinras 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. In that region we have two projects. We have the Rouen project and Mattsen. Mattsen 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 Roan deposit and other deposits in the region to our Madsen mill to grow there. There's a pathway for us to 150,000 ounces a year in Red Lake just in that area. Just a little bit around, there's other areas you can see 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, but because we have the facilities there, we have the opportunity to pick up those opportunities and feed them into the mat. 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 Pure Gold. It was a darling of the stock market. It was very high valued. It went high valued. There was a lot of lack of understanding and just went back into bankruptcy during the time. But again, remember from a point of view of the current gold price they were producing gold they needed to produce at $1900 an ounce. 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 stops 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 stop 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. 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 have solved the problem. You can see the full reconciliation and since that time we've been mining for 12 months now. We have full reconciliation on all the projects. You can see we've also put in a lot of capital projects in place. We've put in a new camp, new mine drive. We bought a lot of new equipment, a lot of investment to set the project up for operations. You can see all the development we've done into the mine and different areas. There is a shaft on the project, so there is a full mill, etc. There's a shaft on the project. That shaft goes down 1200 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's all Westford Lakes development. We've joined up two pieces of the mine. There's two portals and that it wasn't there historically, so 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, so that shaft is a game changer from a cost perspective and moving material. It was a shaft that was there. It was never used by the old timers who had this mine. This mine ran for 32 years. In the 30s to the 60s, it produced 2 million ounces at 9 10 g, so it is a past producer in a different sort of goal environment. I'll get into a little bit of the details. Obviously, you know, there is a lot, there was a lot of concern on this mine that it was a high high grade narrow vein sort of remnant mine around cut and fill stops and small production. But with the work that we've done and the work that the team have done, we've transformed this mine. It's a long haul open stop 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 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, very high grade, so 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. We have an area last year we drilled an area called our 3447 area. You can see the sort of grades we've got there, very, very high grade and more importantly, not just high grade, but widths, good mining widths in that area. And that's our 3447 area that's outlined there. And, and 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. So this is an area we drilled last year. We're mining that now in the 2nd half of 2nd quarter and 3rd quarter. So we've gone in there, we drilled it all last year, we put it together, M plan, and we're mining that now this this quarter going forward. Again, just sort of the steps that we did, we did a pre-feasibility study last year on the project, but 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 a fork deposit and we have a rowan deposit, and then we're growing these areas as we go. So 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 and cold environment and present that as the growth path forward. And this is our 4th 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 600,000 to 70,000 ounces there defined already and 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 them now. That is part of the mine plan in 2027. And again, the concept of this asset is. When the previous opera had it, they went into one area and they lived or died by one area basically. So our concept is to develop a number of different areas with small mines feeding our mill. Our mill is 800 tons a day, but it can go to 1500 tons a day. It was designed. It has that capability to ramp up. But if you have lots of smaller mines feeding in, that's how you get your scale if they're high grade. So the first one is fork we're developing. We also have a Roan 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 ounces on that project defined, very, very high grade, but as you can see, it's open at depth, a lot of good definition. This is the design of that and 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, so that's the concept there as we develop again, 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 eighth zone, there, that goes all the way down. That's 1200 m of a shaft all the way down into the project. We're dewatering all the way down. The eighth zone is a very special zone. It has about 200,000 ounces at 15 g, basically, deep in the system. And just to give some context, in these systems in Red Lake, in, it's owned by Evolution, it was the Gold Corp. down at that depth and below, they discovered a high grade zone in Red Lake which which really transformed the Red Lake Mine. So we, we have, we're mining. I, I talked about the 3447. I talked about, I talked about the 904 area. But you can see we're very still high up in the system. We have a long way to go and it's very open at depth. We have done seismic surveys down to 2.5 kilometers basically of this mine. This, this extends a lot deeper. The shaft, the bottom of the shaft is 1200 and Evolution is currently mining the Red Lake Mine down to 33,000 m basically. They're all the way down, so these systems go deep and very high grade. To give you a sort of analogy is probably familiar with Island Gold, that's owned by Alamos. Island bought Alamos 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, very similar sort of operation. You can see there, as I said, you can see our fork zone where Fork is there as well, and we have another project out there called Starred Olsen, again an old past producer, lots of good hits out there, and that's what we're developing as well. So you'd have 4 to 5 different areas feeding into our Mattson mills to give us that production growth. Again, this is our 3447 area where 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, Monday this week, very, very high grade. This is, 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 Matson mine that was never mined, and it's down at that level and it's been. It'll be drilled this year and then it'll be mined the year after. Our drill results came out, some spectacular grids, 200 g over 7 or 8 m, sort of numbers in that area, very, very, and 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, etc. That's a big area now that we understand and we've gone in there and started the drill. Another opportunity again we're working on is a whole area of the mine called the derelict zone that was an old area that none of the other groups were and we're doing the Nice drive to drill that area and there's lots of optionality in that area to grow that there's, you can see the resource potentials of those areas. Being developed already from our drilling and in our resource model. So as we get over there and drill those out, we expect those to grow. So I'm just kind of giving the concept we have lots of 4 or 5 different areas, mining zones to feed our mats and mill basically we can expand our mill to 1500 tons a day from where we are today to 1500 tons a day. There's a pathway to 150,000 ounces a year that we've defined within Madsen, Roe and Fork. That's 150,000 ounces, and within the region there's lots of other opportunities to grow to 200,000 and above basically in that region itself there's big companies that people know that have big deposits. that are there ready to go, that have never been mined before. One of them has 100 million ounces 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, but that gives us the opportunity to take that and build a big complex. So we see a complex approach to 200,000 ounces 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, but just to give you, it's at the same depth as our 8th 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 A large area of the drilling they've done in Lower Campbell. They added a lot of ounces very quickly from that high 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 Gold Core mine there. That was the old Gold Crep mine. The Discovery, the high grade zone, if you see where the high grade zone was discovered marked in red there, you look at where we are, our 8th zone, sort of the scale and potential, very similar, very similarland Gold. If you took Ireland gold and mapped it, very similar structure, very similar high grade. We're only in the top 1200 m and we know the ore body continues, so this will be a very high grade long life mine over time and 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, there's again across the property, we have a large property there, where the Matson 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 mine. I worked with Eldorado Gold for a long time building mines. I was very successful, I bought the Le Mac project for El Dorado and we put Le Mac project into production, very similar to Madsen. We bought Madsen and brought it into production. Our share structure currently we have some institutions in Vanek. We have extract. We have rougher is a big part of the story and our market cap is around 400 to 500 million. It was before the last Iran war. And 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. And, and that's high level of Westford Lake and Matson Mine if there's any question. 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. You know, the issue that Madison had previously, the previous officers, obviously the whole situation was lack of development, lack of drilling, you know, in, 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, so in order to do these mines properly, you need to be at least 1 year, 1 year and a half ahead of yourself, so they never got ahead of themselves, so. You have to do your development, you have to drill your area, then you have to do your design, and you actually mine it. So we're now into the area. We first you have to dewater the mine. So we're down, 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 3447, 3447 was last year, we're mining it this year, 904 we're drilling it this year. So we're 15 months to 17 months ahead of ourselves from reserve. There's resources defined 1.7 million ounces. We're doing the update study. I suspect we'll get close to a million ounces of reserve, but having that two years ahead of ourselves on the mine design, that's, 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. Thank you very much.
Recorded at Mining Forum Europe 2026, Park Hyatt Zürich, Zürich. Prepared for information only; it is not investment advice or a recommendation. Statements are those of the presenting company as at the date of the presentation. Market figures in US dollars, not as at the date of the forum.