Getchell Gold (CSE: GTCH) has released a preliminary economic assessment for its Fondaway Canyon gold project in Nevada, outlining an open pit operation with an after tax net present value of $905 million and an internal rate of return of 53.1%.
Those figures, discounted at 8%, rest on a base case gold price of $3,200 per ounce. On a pre-tax basis the same model returns a $1 billion NPV and a 58.8% IRR. All amounts are in US dollars.
The study contemplates a conventional 12,000 tonne per day milling operation fed by an open pit in the project’s Central Area, running for 10 years. Over that span the mine would recover 1.52 million ounces of gold, averaging 150,000 ounces annually.
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Mined material would grade 1.38 g/t gold on average, with recoveries of 80% and a life of mine strip ratio of 6.9 to 1. Rather than pour doré on site, Getchell plans to produce a high grade concentrate and ship it to a third party facility in Nevada for final processing.
Initial capital is pegged at $188.4 million, rising to $265.3 million once capitalized stripping is included. Both figures carry a 20% construction contingency. The company expects to recover its pre-tax outlay in 1.5 years, or two years after tax.
Getchell has said that it has not considered sustaining capital costs due to the use of contract mining.
Operating costs are estimated at $1,373 per ounce, with total cash costs of $1,740 per ounce once refining charges and a 3% royalty are added. No all in sustaining cost figure was provided.
The assessment marks a step up from Getchell’s 2025 PEA, with contained ounces and annual production each rising 28% and the base case NPV climbing more than 60%. Much of that owes to a simplified flowsheet, higher throughput and a stronger gold price assumption.
“This PEA readily demonstrates the potential for a robust economic open pit mining operation producing 150,000 ounces of gold per year,” said President Mike Sieb, who added that the scale would rank Fondaway Canyon among Nevada’s ten largest mining operations.
Getchell Gold last traded at $0.23 on the CSE.
