Tony Makuch kicked off Modern Mining and Technology Week in Sudbury
Timmins-based Lake Shore Gold has come a long way since a rough patch in 2012 and 2013 when a lot of investors thought the gold producer could go bankrupt.The company’s first quarter of 2015 was its best ever, with a record production of 53,000 ounces of gold, representing a 19 per cent increase over the same period in 2014.
In a keynote address kicking off Modern Mining and Technology Week in Sudbury on April 24, Lake Shore Gold president and CEO Tony Makuch provided an overview of the company’s trials, tribulations, and more recent
successes.
“No one thought there was any value in these deposits,” Makuch said, referring to the company’s two Timmins mines: Bell Creek and Timmins West.
With its 100-year mining history, some critics dismissed the potential for new gold discoveries in Timmins before Lake Shore Gold found its first
deposit in 2004.
“I knew we had good geology,” Makuch said. “You have to go deeper and look for stuff that’s a little bit harder (to find).”
Lake Shore Gold began sinking a shaft at Timmins West in 2008, and entered full commercial production in 2010.
But things didn’t really take off for Lake Shore Gold’s stock price until the company completed a milling facility at the Bell Creek complex in 2013.
In 2015, the company announced it had increased its gold reserves by 29 per cent over the previous year, from 598,800 ounces to 773,300 ounces.
Lake Shore Gold is now drilling off its recently discovered 144 Gap Zone 500 metres from the Timmins West mine shaft.
Makuch said if all goes according to plan, Lake Shore Gold could be producing ore from the 144 Gap by the end of 2016, and could enter full production by the second half of 2017.
Makuch was honoured earlier this year by Brendan Wood International as a Top Gun Turnaround CEO due to Lake Shore Gold’s value appreciation of approximately 187 per cent, as well as the simultaneous improvement of the company’s position on the Brendan Wood Shareholder Confidence
Index.
“It is an extraordinary feat to raise a company from its lowest ebb and simultaneously lead investors to a change of mind about that company’s future,” said Brendan Wood. “Tony Makuch did that and more for Lake Shore Gold
last year.
“A year and a half ago, shareholder confidence ratings on Lake Shore Gold were deeply disheartening. Tony did not have any investor fans – quite the reverse. He somehow set pessimism aside and went to work to create extraordinary cost efficiency at the mine sites. To say Tony’s boots were on the ground is an understatement.”
