The Sao Francisco Mine, located in western Mato Grosso State, Brazil, is 50 kilometres southeast of the Sao Vicente Mine, and at the center of a historic gold-producing district.
The Sao Francisco mine is an open-pit, heap leach gold mine located in western Mato Grosso State, Brazil, approximately 560 kilometres west of Cuiaba, the state capital, and approximately 50 kilometres southeast of the Sao Vicente mine in the prolific Guapore gold belt. The Sao Francisco mine can be accessed via highway from Cuiaba, which is serviced by several daily flights from a number of Brazilian cities. A power line connects the Sao Francisco mine to the national grid and water is readily available. The property consists of four contiguous mining and exploration permits, covering approximately 16,370 hectares.
The Sao Francisco deposit is an epigenetic shear-hosted and structurally controlled lode gold orebody, composed of one centimetre to five centimetre wide, sericitic quartz veins containing free gold. The orebody occurs in a hydrothermal alteration zone along the axial plane of an anticlinal fold within the basal Fortuna Formation of a 1,200 metre-thick sequence of clastic sediments known as the Aguapeí Group. Gold occurs as free gold and frequently as coarse nuggets associated with quartz, as laminations along the fracture planes, and within limonite boxworks after pyrite and arsenopyrite.
Modern day exploration at the Sao Francisco mine has occurred periodically since 1990. Exploration activities conducted during this period included diamond drilling, reverse circulation drilling, metallurgical testing and bulk sampling.