Silver Range sampled the back of a collapsed stope in the Gold Chief property and the results returned 14 m at 1.93g/t gold including 4 m at 3.86 g/t gold.
The company acquired the remaining 50% in the joint venture from its previous partner and said negotiations were already advanced with an unnamed potential new associate.
The company said the expansion, to start in early 2019, would add an average 60,000 tonnes of copper a year to its production over the first 15 years of operation.
While the project known as S11D isn’t scheduled to hit its 90-million-ton capacity until 2020, China’s appetite for the mine’s low-cost, high-grade ore continues to grow.