Longevity in the gold mining industry is as much a badge of honour as it is difficult to achieve.

Canadian gold miner St Andrew Goldfields was first incorporated way back in 1983.

Throughout its long journey, SAS has operated properties across Canada and internationally. In true industry style, however, not all of these have been efficient or profitable, with a number either placed on care and maintenance or shut down.

In 2007 the company sat down to take a good, hard look at the way it was operating and decided change was needed.

That saw a rebuilding of the management and board, including the appointment of Jacques Perron, former vice-president for North and South America at Iamgold, as president and chief executive. “The company has been around for some time and had very good moments and some not so good moments,” Perron told RESOURCESTOCKS.

“We wanted to make sure investors, the market and our stakeholders recognise although SAS still has the same name, it is a new company with a new management team and a new focus.

“The previous management team was trying to develop the company in different areas around the world.

“We have divested all non-core assets and we have refocused all our attention on our properties in the Timmins area in northeast Ontario.” SAS sees its future growth in bringing existing assets into production rather than from the acquisition of other properties.

The company has three potential mining operations within a 120kmlong land package east of Timmins reaching up to the Quebec border.

The Holloway-Holt property consists of two operations, both of which were previously producing gold mines, and a 3000 tonne per day mill.

Completing the triptych is Hislop, a future open pit operation lying 40km west of the Holloway mine. Holloway was built in the 1980s by Noranda and has been operated by a number of companies over the years, the last of which was Newmont.

Holloway is a mine that requires a higher gold price in order to be profitable. In 2005, due to the low world gold price, Newmont decided to shut the mine down and sell it.

“Holloway is the first mine we are going to bring into production,” Perron said.

“It is a mechanised operation that is recognised in the area as a good operation. In the current gold price environment, we say it is a fantastic operation with very good infrastructure.

“It has been kept in perfect condition by Newmont and we intend on bringing it into production by November this year.

“Our preproduction program is going very well and at this time we believe we are going to be on time, on budget and producing in the fourth quarter.”

Once Holloway is up and running, SAS will turn its attention to Hislop, where it has previously produced ore at various stages over the years.

Hislop has not been operational since 2005-06 but it still has all necessary infrastructure in place. “What we intend to do at Hislop, starting towards the end of the year in the cold winter months, is to start stripping the overburden material,” Perron said.

“We will do that then because it is easier to remove that material in the winter when the ground is frozen. “In the early part of next year we are going to start to drill and blast. We want to start shipping ore from the mine to the mill in the early stages of 2010.”

Hislop lies around 10km east of Apollo Gold’s Black Fox project. The Hislop operation will be similar to Black Fox, with the major difference being that Apollo had to start from scratch whereas SAS has the pit and infrastructure already in place.

SAS is confident that production from Holloway and Hislop will generate sufficient cash flow to develop Holt, which is earmarked to go into production in the second half of 2010.

At that point the Holt mill will be fully utilised as the company will be producing 3000t per day from its three operations.