Metanor's Batchelor Lake Gold Mill: Metanor Resources Inc. (TSX-V: MTO) is an unhedged gold producer in mining friendly Quebec. Metanor at its 100% owned 1,200 (upgradeable capacity) TPD mill in Desmaraisville (Val d'Or) is now a full fledged commercial producer as of October 1, 2008. Production in 2009/10 should conservatively come in at 55K+oz in 2009/10. Ore extract is coming from their 100% open pit operation on their Barry gold deposit (located approximately 65 km southeast of the mill). High grade underground ore from their Bachelor Lake Gold Mine is set to come online in approximately 1 year.

Excerpts from April 3, 2009 Interview:

Q. 1 Mining Journal: I understand you have had a huge vote of confidence in Metanor through your recent private placement offering.

 
 Ronald Perry, VP & Treasurer Metanor: “With regards to the closing of the recent private placement, we are very pleased to have on board Sprott Asset Management who subscribed to 20M shares, CDN$10M of the $12.2M offered. Additionally, we are pleased to note Goodman and Company had acquired another 450K shares at market during the month of February. Subsequent to that, Goodman and Co. entered into the private placement offering, subscribing to an additional 3.1M shares bringing their holdings up to 14.35M shares of MTO.V. Combined holding of MTO.V shares by Sprott Asset Management and Goodman and Co. is now aprx. 34M Shares; Metanor Resources is now 1/3 owned by two of the largest and most prestigious investment institutions in Canada…. two institutions that like gold."

 

Q.2 Mining Journal: What type of expenditures are coming up to get the mill and underground to where you want it to be, could you have done it on cash flow alone, and I assume you are capitalized well enough now to get to where you want to be?

 

Ronald Perry, VP & Treasurer Metanor: "With regards to the mill upgrades necessary to get where we want to be -- the key is we can now proceed, we can now go and issue contracts and we don’t have to worry about whether we will have the money – we have it. When you operate a business do you want to take the risk? - Not knowing where the capital markets will be. We can’t count on cash flow. What we did was the prudent thing. It is dilutive, but look what we’re bringing onboard with Eric Sprott and Goodman & Company. We are currently at 800TPD and are taking it to the next stage. We raised CDN$12M, we had a ~CDN$2M on hand and we still have a line of credit available. We budgeted CDN$5M to take the mill from 700 to 1200TPD, we did do from 700TPD to 800TPD for well under $100K so we don’t think we will be using the full $5M. We are going to do the headframe at ~$1.5M, hoist room ~$1.5M, the shaft sinking budget for 2009 will be about $4.5M, other work at Bachelor is about $3M. We have money available to do all this work now and we will proceed to award contracts. We pride ourselves on improving on consultant estimates and budgets and always try to do so; one of the contracts was about $1.5M and we are going to be awarding it for about $1M plus taxes. The point of doing things the way we did is that it secures our future. Going from cash flow alone to progress underground we wouldn’t be awarding all these contracts as it would have taken much more time, and we felt the time is ‘now’."

 

Q.3 Mining Journal: Where exactly do you see Metanor ‘production wise’ when the upgrades and improvements are finished and by when?

 

Ronald Perry, VP & Treasurer Metanor: "The PP funds allow us to proceed with our plans; progress underground and bring our mill up to 1200TPD, process the high grade ore from the Bachelor underground mine at conservatively ~7g/t and blend with the 3+g/t ore from the Barry open pit deposit. We are being conservative in saying an average of 5-6 g/t at 1200TPD 94% recovery will get us close to 70,000 ounces gold per annum, with a blended direct cash cost of ~US$458 - this should be in about 14 months from now, by July, 2010."

  

Q.4 Mining Journal: Will the mill continue to operate, producing gold, adding to cash flow 24/7 the whole interim improvement period? [Click Here to see full interview].... ##