Orla confident it can find a ‘critical mass of future gold resources’ at Musselwhite mine: CEO

When Orla Mining (TSX: OLA) bought Newmont’s (NYSE: NEM) Musselwhite gold mine in Ontario for $850 million late last year it made the company a multinational producer set to double its annual gold production.

Orla currently operates the Camino Rojo mine in Mexico, and the acquisition elevated it from a single-asset producer to a multi-asset miner.

The step into Canada was also a return home for some senior management, CEO Jason Simpson told MINING.com host Devan Murugan.

“Many of us at Orla started our careers in the underground mines of Northern Ontario,” Simpson said.

Simpson also said the company is confident that it will be able to extend Musselwhite’s mine life beyond 2030 through a return to surface drilling, which hasn’t happened since 2018.

“We knew we were purchasing a six-year mine life from Newmont, but it was the confidence that our geologists had that we can not only extend mine life, but that we can potentially find a critical mass of future gold resources and increase the production scale of that asset,” Simpson said. 

“We will be aggressively exploring from underground, and at surface.”