The Joanna property (formerly the Hosco-Heva) is situated in Joannes Township in the south central portion of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, within the Superior structural province of the Canadian Shield. All rocks are Archean in age except for the late crosscutting Proterozoic diabase dykes.

The gold deposit at Joanna may be described as a sediments hosted orogenic gold deposit related to the structural control of the Cadillac fault. Mineralization is mainly developed in the form of finely disseminated sulfides envelopes (pseudo lenses) with minor quartz veining in Cadillac Group sediments in contact with mafic layers corresponding possibly to sill. The main brittleductile deformation comprising the Cadillac Fault is concentrated in these metasedimentary layers. The genetics of the deposit has not been studied in detail. Historically, previous exploration was focused on quartz veins within the deformation and mineralization corridor where gold was present in higher grades.

Gold appears to be mainly associated with finely crystallized sulfides in a biotite rich schist with minor deformed millimetric to pluri-centimetric quartz veins. Mineral assemblage also includes variable concentrations of white mica, carbonate, albite, garnet, and possible other aluminosilicates. Amphibole and tourmaline rich replacement zones have been locally identified.

Mining Hosco ore will follow the standard practice of an open-pit operation with conventional drill and blast, load and haul cycle using drill/truck/shovel mining fleet. The overburden and waste rock material will be hauled to the overburden and waste disposal areas near the pit. The run-of-mine ore will be drilled, blasted and loaded by hydraulic shovels and delivered by trucks to the primary crusher or stockpiles near the crusher.

The following is a summary of major processing steps and design criteria:

- Ore is crushed using a single jaw crusher. Crushed ore is stored in a concrete silo from which it is reclaimed with vibrating feeders onto a belt conveyor, which then feeds the SAG mill.

- The grinding circuit comprises a single pinion SAG mill with a variable speed drive operated in an open circuit, which feeds a ball mill with a fixed speed drive. The ball mill is operated in a closed circuit with a hydrocyclone cluster. The product of the ball mill circuit is then fed to a flotation circuit to be concentrated.

- A portion of the ball mill discharge is fed to a pair of gravity concentrating units operated in parallel, which recover gravity recoverable gold. The gravity circuit tailings are returned to the ball mill feed. The concentrate from the gravity circuit is upgraded using a shaking table (as a batch operation). The shaking table concentrate is directed to the melting furnace and the tailings are combined with the flotation concentrate, which in turn are sent to the Pressure Oxidation (POX) area.

- The ground ore from the grinding circuit is directed to the flotation area. The flotation circuit is made up of a roughing stage comprised of eight (8) mechanical tank cells in series, a cleaning column and a cleaner-scavenger column.
- The flotation tails are thickened using a high rate thickener and pumped to the flotation tailings pond for final disposition. These tailings are classified as neutral and non-acid generating so no special design features are required for this tailings impoundment area.
- The flotation concentrate is thickened using a high rate thickener and is directed to the POX area.

- The POX area consists of the following steps:
- The first step in the POX process consists of pressure oxidation in the autoclave. In this stage, the concentrate slurry is exposed to a high pressure oxygen atmosphere, which results in a high degree of oxidation of the sulphide-bearing minerals in the concentrate.
- Oxygen is produced on-site with a vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) plant, which will be owned and operated by an industrial gas Vendor.
- The oxidized solids are washed in a series of two high rate thickeners in the counter current decantation (CCD) stage to separate it from the acidic solution generated in the POX stage. The washed concentrate constitutes feed to the cyanide leaching area.
- The aforementioned acidic solution is directed to the neutralization stage, which is made up of a series of stirred vessels that serve to neutralize the solution with additions of limestone and lime. The neutralization reaction causes the precipitation of dissolved metals to occur. The precipitated solids (neutralization tails) are thickened in a high rate thickener and are combined with the cyanide leaching tailings (after cyanide destruction) for final disposition.

- The oxidized concentrate is leached in a cyanide solution in a series of four (4) agitated and aerated tanks in order to dissolve the contained gold.

- From the leach tanks, the slurry is then fed to a series of ten (10) carousel-type carbon-inpulp (CIP) tanks. At this stage, the slurry is brought into contact with activated carbon, which adsorbs the gold in solution.

- The gold-loaded activated carbon is sent to the stripping stage where the gold is desorbed from the activated carbon into a concentrated solution. The gold is then electrodeposited in an electro- winning cell. Lastly, the gold is melted in an induction furnace and cast into bars that constitute the final product from the Joanna gold extraction process.

- The leached slurry is sent from the CIP stage to a cyanide destruction stage comprised of an agitated vessel to which SO2 gas, CuSO4 and air are added. Following the cyanide destruction stage, this tailings slurry, combined with the neutralization slurry, is pumped to the POX tailings pond. These tailings contain a high level of As. The water also contains some residual cyanide, which must be destroyed before being released to the watershed. As a result, the POX tailings impoundment area, which contains the tailings and the water, requires a special design in order to prevent contact with other surroundings.