February 11: Pumpkin Hollow Commissioning and Development Update

February 11, 2020

As you’ll know from our news releases of December 16 and December 24, we have begun production at Pumpkin Hollow’s underground project and have already shipped the first concentrate. Of course, with any process plant of this size, commissioning-related activities generally continue for no less than six months. With that in mind, I wanted to give you an update on commissioning activities, as well as outline our progress underground.

(Pumpkin Hollow processing plant at night)

Commissioning Activities

We are operating the mill using our large stockpile of development ore and can confirm the following:

• Grinding circuit working as designed

• Flotation circuit working as expected to produce a saleable concentrate

• Concentrate filter press operating to design specs

• Filter presses for the dry stack tailings operating to design specs

• Stacking filtered tails on our lined facility as designed

• We have built up our process plant team and continue to have support from our primary contractor Sedgman.

• The paste plant foundations are being constructed. The new mine administration and change room building has been completed and we are now occupying that facility.

Up Next for Commissioning

• Continue monitoring the grinding circuit to ensure design grind size of P80 100 microns

• Optimize the reagent stream to ensure full design recoveries are obtained

• Maintain filter presses to continue full performance and availability

Underground Development Progress

The big news for the underground is that the EN ventilation shaft sinking has been completed. This is very exciting as it will allow us to begin hoisting production ore from our first stopes and provide secondary escape way and ventilation as per MSHA regulations.

We have also now completed the connecting ramp between the 2770 level and the 2850 level.

We are continuing to conduct definition drilling to confirm the ore body grades and location and are also focusing efforts on several development fronts. These fronts include but are not limited to the shaft bottom access decline, the coarse ore bin development, the sub station development and the paste hole cement hole bore hole completion.

The service hoist for the main production shaft has been installed and will be commissioned in the coming weeks.

We are also excited to have Redpath join our team to help us achieve steady state production this year.

Up Next for Development

• Final installation of temporary fans to create flow through ventilation down the main shaft and out the East North Ventilation shaft

• Shaft bottom access ramp completion

• Start of coarse ore bin construction

• Lowering of additional mobile mining equipment and infrastructure items underground<

• Start of the main shaft change-over activities

• Continued mining of high-grade copper stopes to provide process plant feed

• Continued development of primary underground ramps and infrastructure

Please get in touch with any questions and be sure to subscribe to our mailing list to receive the latest news releases and updates as they are released. Also, if you are a social media user, please connect with us via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

David Swisher, SVP of Operations