With over 35 years exploring for all major mineral deposit types, our technical expertise combined with our superior project management, has successfully advanced projects, creating value for project stakeholders and owners.
See Projects
From advanced-stage exploration to greenfields surface examination, here is a cross-section of our many successful projects.
Confident that KZK is a world-class base metals deposit, BMC Minerals acquired the project in 2015 with the goal of efficiently and quickly up-grading the 1990s era geological databases to re-calculate the mineral resource and economic studies that would support mine finance, permitting and construction.
Following the discovery of the deposit in 1994, no exploration or geological work had occurred since 1998. BMC needed to complete numerous studies to support a modern feasibility study and mine permitting.
Within 10 months, Equity secured exploration permits, constructed and managed a 50-person camp, and completed 25,000 m of diamond drilling. Supported by these new datasets and information from a 28,000 m core re-logging program, Equity created new geological models for use in the modern Mineral Resource Estimate. Over four years, Equity managed 55,000 m of drilling at KZK and continues to support the project managing near-deposit exploration work.
In 2015, GoldMining Inc. acquired the Whistler Gold-Copper project in Alaska, including all historical data summarizing work completed between 1986 and 2012. The project was put on care and maintenance until 2023 when ‘spinco’ US GoldMining Inc. completed an IPO, raising $20M USD to fund the rediscovery of Whistler.
Historical data lacked cohesion across previous operators and was not effectively harmonized. Geological models did not fully honour previous observations and technical knowledge.
Equity compiled all historical data to deliver a comprehensive data set to build a new geological model. Equity’s geological modelling assisted US Goldmining Inc. in updating resource models, and targeting new extensions of gold and copper at the Whistler deposit. Based on this work, US Goldmining cored the best drill intersection of continuous mineralization at the project to date: returning 652.5 m at 1.00 g/t gold equivalent. (See usgoldmining.us for more information)
In 2019, Newcrest Mining acquired 70% of the Red Chris Mine with the goal of mining the deeper, higher-grade parts of the Cu-Au deposit by transitioning the open pit mine to an underground block cave operation.
Prior to 2019, the deeper parts of the Red Chris Porphyry had only been sparsely drill-tested. To get the geological, geotechnical and geochemical information required to support block-caving design, Newcrest planned significant exploratory and definition drilling to expedite project development.
Within a month of engagement, Equity provided a complete geological and drilling support team that managed eight diamond drill rigs year-round. In all, Equity managed 267,000 m of drilling and helped Newcrest develop their own in-house team over three years of integrated involvement.
Aurizona commenced initial production in 2010 as an open pit mining operation with gold ore extracted from laterite and saprolite portions of the Piaba orogenic gold deposit. Operators placed the mine on care and maintenance in 2015 because the mill was not designed to process the harder, gold-bearing fresh rock beneath the softer laterite and saprolite. Equinox Gold assumed management of the distressed asset in 2016 and began evaluating options to re-open the mine.
Due to the placement of the mine infrastructure, the Piaba open pit resource is limited despite high grades at depth. To increase the mine life, Equinox was challenged to explore for additional targets amenable to open pit mining while advancing studies on underground mining at Piaba.
Equity completed drilling and resource modelling within high-grade, deeper portions of the Piaba deposit to evaluate underground mining possibilities. Additional drilling on brownfields targets and core re-logging advanced several satellite deposits. A positive Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) released in 2021 demonstrates the underground potential of Piaba and highlights the prospectivity of the near-mine targets.
Boasting 2.45M ounces of gold production over 38 years of mining, Madsen Mine is the third largest historical gold producer in the world-class Red Lake gold camp of northern Ontario. Recognizing the immense, well-archived but little-used historical dataset and potential for undiscovered high-grade gold, Pure Gold Mining purchased the shuttered mine in 2014.
Navigating the ebbs and flows of the junior mining company markets, Pure Gold needed an on-demand team to unravel the complex Madsen geology and determine the controls of gold distribution, while executing large but campaign-based surface and drilling exploration programs.
Initially contracted to oversee surface mapping and sampling programs, Equity was eventually called upon to manage drilling operations in 2015. We deployed an experienced technical and support team that, within a week, was set up on site to process drill core and oversee all aspects of drilling which eventually ramped up to four highly productive drilling rigs. In all, Equity geologists designed and managed 353,000 m of surface and underground drilling over five years, relogged and interpreted 270,000 m of historical drill core and co-authored PEA, PFS and FS technical reports. Information from drilling and surface mapping was used to complete an inaugural, property-wide shear zone model which is still being corroborated by drilling campaigns.
In 2022, Li-FT Power acquired a 100% interest in the Yellowknife Lithium Project (YLP) comprising mineral leases over numerous spodumene-bearing pegmatite dykes in the Yellowknife Pegmatite Province.
Li-FT’s goal: define the largest hard rock lithium resource in North America. The YLP portfolio, which includes 13 different lithium-bearing pegmatite intrusions, required intense resource definition drilling and channel sampling at multiple targets to collect well-organized, clean datasets to support initial resource estimates and a scoping study.
Equity successfully managed over 49,000 m of drilling during back-to-back summer and winter exploration seasons complicated by a wildfire-induced evacuation. The summer drill program required coordination of operations in three project areas utilizing six drill rigs, up to eight helicopters and planes, and up to 100 people. The winter program required the project to operate in sub-arctic conditions with construction of supporting infrastructure of ice roads, ice airstrips and winter camps.
Recognizing the underexplored, deep porphyry potential of the Kliyul Cu-Au deposit, Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. secured an option to acquire the property in 2020.
Historically, very few drill holes had intersected mineralization deeper than about 100 m. Understanding this under-tested opportunity, Pacific Ridge sought to expand the deposit by drilling deeper holes in this rugged and remote part of BC.
Equity established and managed a 50-person remote camp and completed 18,850 m of diamond drilling, successfully intersecting porphyry-style alteration and Cu-Au in every hole and expanding the mineralized footprint in all directions. Surface mapping and sampling combined with geophysical surveys managed by Equity, defined additional drill-ready targets.
Martiniére is an orogenic gold deposit in the northernmost greenstone belt of the prolific Abitibi Subprovince in Ontario-Quebec. The property was acquired as part of a larger land package by Balmoral Resources in 2009 who engaged Equity to manage exploration drilling.
The northern Abitibi is flat, swampy, and covered by a thick layer of glacial sediments which complicates exploration and geological understanding. Balmoral looked to Equity to manage safe, cost-effective diamond drilling-focused exploration campaigns.
Equity managed 68,000 m of diamond drilling in nine separate campaigns at all-inclusive costs of <$300/m, despite the program being remote and helicopter-supported during summer. Equity used creative cost saving procedures that included building a winter road/trail network, establishing walking trails for 24-hour access to the drills in summer, and real time evaluation of drilling results.
Time is money and there wasn’t enough of either. After the project acquisition took longer than expected (as usual) there was pressure to not miss the current field season and avoid delaying the five-year plan for advancing this mineral project. Shareholders were wringing their hands already.
Everyone wanted results and news flow yesterday. Unfortunately, the project database wasn’t organized as promised, and no one could find the key to the dusty storage locker containing historical paper records. There was also archived drill core recording 50 years of historical exploration that needed review and in-fill sampling, a remote camp that needed safety upgrades, and a large portfolio of earlier stage targets to evaluate. Panic was setting in. Management needed feet on the ground ASAP.
Equity stepped in and immediately assigned an Exploration Manager and two Project Geologists to spearhead the project and cross-shift one another during field campaigns. GIS, database, logistics and resource geology experts were quickly put in place to roundout the team, while equipment and top-shelf field support was resourced. Supported by the Health and Safety team, project leaders completed a comprehensive risk assessment and designed appropriate mitigation measures. A small technical team was deployed to the site to review archived drill core and recode the drill hole database into a system based on geological first principles. The best drilling targets were identified and three months later drilling was safely completed on time and on budget. Booyah!
Leverage all of our skills across a large project or access our expertise for one specific need.
Our Services