The known deposits within the Project area are considered to be examples of turbidite-hosted, orogenic mesothermal gold deposits.

A number of argillite units, separated by greywackes, occur within the Touquoy property. Mineralization is hosted within the Touquoy argillite unit of the Moose River Formation of the Goldenville Group. The argillite is folded around the Moose River–Fifteen Mile Stream Anticline, a regional structure that can be traced for at least 47 km from a position approximately 6 km south west of the Touquoy deposit, to approximately 4 km northeast of Fifteen Mile Stream.

The anticline geometry varies along its length in the property area, from an upright tightly-folded anticline in the vicinity of the Touquoy deposit to multiple tight folds, overturned to the north, in the Stillwater area.

The argillite unit is as much as 180 m thick close to the hinge in the northern limb and appears to thin with depth. It is much thinner in the southern limb, typically 25–60 m wide. In the northern limb, the Touquoy argillite is separated into upper and lower units by a distinctive marker horizon, the rip-up unit, which varies from a thin (<2 m thick) horizon of sparse sandstone rip-up clasts in a finer grained matrix to a fine or medium grained greywacke. The rip-up unit has only rarely been recognized in the southern limb.

The Moose River–Fifteen Mile Stream Anticline is tightly folded and upright to overturned with both lim ........

2023 - In-pit mining ceased in February, at which time the operation commenced processing historic stockpiles. Touquoy operation has transitioned into Care and Maintenance.

Description (2019)
Mining is based on conventional open pit methods suited for the project location and local site requirements. The mining fleet will include diesel powered down the hole (DTH) drills with 144 mm bit size for production drilling, diesel-powered RC drills for bench-scale grade control drilling, 5 m3 bucket size diesel hydraulic excavators and 7 m3 bucket sized wheel loaders for production loading, and 64 t payload rigid-frame haul trucks and 41 t articulated trucks for production hauling, plus ancillary and service equipment to support the mining operations. In-pit dewatering systems will be established for each pit. All surface water and precipitation in the pits will be handled by submersible pumps.

Pit designs are configured on 10 m bench heights, with 8m wide berms placed every two benches, or double benching. Bench face angles, and subsequent inter-ramp angles are varied based on prescribed azimuths and depth from surface, as specified by each geotechnical report.

The pit slope criteria for Touquoy are based on a 2011 geotechnical report by Peter O’Bryan & Associates (O’Bryan, 2011). The shallower slopes at the 60 m depth are based on the requirement for a 15 m wide catch berm at this bench.

The Touquoy process plant is located east of Moose River, northeast of the Touquoy open pit and northwest of the TMF.

The main plant building houses the grinding, gravity recovery, reagent, elution and refinery sections. The crushing and CIL sections are located outdoors. The three-stage crushing circuit ahead of a single-stage ball mill is based on modular semi-mobile crushing equipment so as to allow the modifications necessary to allow the introduction of Beaver Dam ore.

Crushing
ROM is hauled from the Touquoy pit to the primary crusher and tipped over a static grizzly sloped to bring oversize back to the loading side for removal by a front-end wheel loader (FEL). The FEL supplements the direct-tip feed from the Touquoy ROM stockpiles to maintain a continuous crushing operation. Mine operations retrieve any oversize and either use a mobile rock breaker to reduce the lump size or return oversize to the pit.

The mobile crushing plant produces a fine ore sized to a P80 of 10 mm. The throughput of the crushing plant package is 381 t/h at a crushing plant availability of 60%.

The vibrating grizzly feeder feeds the primary jaw crusher at the front of the mobile crushing circuit. The oversize from the vibrating grizzly enters the single toggle jaw crusher. A tramp magnet removes steel trash from the primary crushed ore.

The fine ore product is conveyed to a fine ore stockpile (12,000 t capacity; live volume of 3,000 t). Two variable-speed reclaim slot belt feeders provide two live pockets and an estimated 25% natural reclaim of the stockpile. The fine ore feed to the mill is conveyed by a 95 m long covered mill feed conveyor from the two fine ore reclaim feeders to the mill feed chute.

The fine ore is processed through one single pinion ball mill in closed circuit with hydrocyclones producing a final product of P80 150 µm. The mill has a nominal solids throughput of 5,479 t/d and can process 250 t/h at 91.3% availability. The overall ball mill circulating load is 250%

Grinding
The mill is sized to handle both the Touquoy and Beaver Dam ores without any mechanical adjustment required during the transition between mines. The Touquoy ore is expected to operate at a lower ball volume and steel ball consumption than Beaver Dam ore to compensate for the difference in hardness and abrasion characteristics.

Mill slurry discharge overflows onto a rubber-lined trommel screen with trommel oversize discharging to a bunker for regular collection and disposal. The trommel undersize gravitates to the cyclone feed hopper where the slurry is diluted with process water and pumped with a duty/standby cyclone feed pump to the cyclone cluster. A density meter monitors and controls the amount of process water required to produce a target density to the cyclones.

The cyclone underflow splits, with up to 30% feeding the gravity circuit and the remaining underflow stream gravitating to the ball mill. The cyclone produces a fine ground overflow product of P80 150 µm which is sampled, and then gravitates to the vibrating trash screen. Oversize debris are removed and falls to a trash bin at ground level. The minus 0.8 mm trash screen underflow flows by gravity to the CIL circuit

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