North Bay Resources Inc. (OTC:NBRI) announced that it has started shipping gold ore from the Fran Gold project in British Columbia to its Bishop Gold Mill in California.
The company said a four-man crew has been mobilized to the site and the first tractor trailers are due to arrive next week.
The initial shipment consists of 44 tons of surface material, graded between 1.2 and 2.3 ounces of gold per ton, with plans to ramp up shipping throughout the fall, weather permitting.
North Bay has identified around 5,000 tons of target material ready for processing at the Fran project, plus “a substantially larger amount” of near-surface material in trenches.
Additionally, North Bay announced it entered into a joint venture agreement with a private company to acquire a 50% stake in the Taber Gold Mine, located in Sierra County, California.
To earn this stake, the company must extract 5,000 tons of material or spend $1.5 million within 30 months.
The Taber Mine shares a mineral channel with the Union-Keystone Mine, one of the most productive gold producers in the area, having yielded over 1.1 million ounces of gold, the company noted.
The Taber property features two mineralized channels, the Front and Back Channels, which converge into the Bellevue Channel that crosses into the Union-Keystone Mine.
These channels stretch about 6,000 feet in length and reach a height of up to six feet, which North Bay highlighted offers substantial potential for future extraction.
A mining crew has already begun rehabilitation work on-site at the Taber Mine, focusing on reinforcing tunnels to access the Wild Boar Zone, located 700 feet inside the mine.
Upon securing access, the team will sample three known mining faces where operations occurred as recently as the 1990s.
Once samples are confirmed, North Bay plans to begin test mining, followed by further development of the mine, including work on the largely unmined Back Channel.