Vancouver-headquartered B2Gold Corp has declared commercial production at its Goose mine, in Nunavut, Canada. The mine is part of the company's Black River Gold District and is expected to contribute 80 000 oz to 110 000 oz of gold to the group's overall output for this year.

"This tremendous achievement comes just over three months after the commencement of mill operations. The Goose mine will be a cornerstone of B2Gold’s production base and demonstrates the strength of our construction and operating teams worldwide. We view this milestone as just the beginning for the Back River Gold District and look forward to many years of safe and successful production in Nunavut, Canada," comments B2Gold president and CEO Clive Johnson.

B2Gold has declared commercial production at mine based on an internal commercial production measure of 30 consecutive days of average mill throughput at 65% or greater based on the mill design capacity of 4 000 t a day. From September 3, through to October 2, the mill achieved an average throughput of 2 652 t a day, which represents 66% of design capacity.

Mill feed over the 30-day commercial production period has been predominantly from the mined out Echo openpit.

Crushed ore availability has significantly increased in the second half of September as the supplemental mobile crusher has been integrated with the primary crushing plant. From September 19 to October 2, ore has been crushed at a rate of 183 t an hour, which equates to 4 385 t a day extrapolated over a 24-hour period.

Through this same period, the mill has achieved an average throughput of 3 249 t a day, which represents 81.2% of design capacity.

B2Gold believes the Goose mill can operate near design capacity of 4 000 t a day through the fourth quarter of this year.

For the fourth quarter, mill feed will predominantly come from the Umwelt deposit and is expected to average between 6.5 g/t and 7 g/t gold. Gold recoveries have been in line with expectations through the 30-day commercial production period and are expected to average higher than 90% through the fourth quarter of this year and beyond.

The Goose mine is expected to produce about 250 000 oz of gold in 2026 and about 330 000 oz of gold in 2027.

B2Gold, which also owns and operates mines in Mali, Namibia and the Philippines, invested about C$800-million to develop the Goose mine.