Disseminated on behalf of West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd.
The Madsen Mine, located in Ontario’s renowned Red Lake gold district, has a legacy of high-grade gold production. Historically, this region has produced over 30 million ounces of gold, proving its geological richness and mining potential. However, previous attempts to revive the Madsen Mine fell short due to operational inefficiencies and technical missteps.
Today, under the leadership of West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. (WRLG), Madsen is setting up to succeed. With a clear plan, robust infrastructure improvements, and lessons learned from the past, this revitalized operation is poised to deliver results.
Here’s why Madsen will work this time.
A Gold-Rich Region with Clear Rules for Success
Red Lake has long been recognized as one of the most prolific gold-producing regions in Canada. The geology is well understood, and successful mining here follows established rules of thumb. West Red Lake Gold Mines has embraced these principles to ensure Madsen’s success.
One critical factor is drilling density – how much drilling is done to really understand the deposit before mining it. The previous operator tried to mine the deposit using drill holes about 20 meters apart. This method didn’t work well for Red Lake’s narrow vein deposits.
The rule of thumb in this region is 7-meter spacing to define a resource for mining accurately. West Red Lake Gold has followed this standard to define the tonnes it will mine in the first 18 months, with 90,000 metres of drilling already done. It will keep doing this definition drilling for Madsen’s entire lifespan. This commitment ensures precise resource estimation and minimizes risk during production.
Proactive Development: Building Access for Efficiency
Mining narrow vein high-grade deposits requires proactive planning and development. A key lesson from past operators is the need to access multiple work areas at the same time. This means driving tunnels to mining areas is planned 6 to 12 months. The tunnels are used first for definition drilling and then for mining.
West Red Lake Gold has been developing access at Madsen for over 1.5 years already. This approach ensures that drilling and mining operations can proceed smoothly across several areas at any given time.
By jumping in and getting access development done, the company has mitigated challenges that previously hindered deposit model accuracy and productivity at Madsen and set the stage for sustainable operations.
Infrastructure Upgrades: Efficiency at Every Level
Operational efficiency is essential for modern mining success. So WRLG made significant investments in upgrading Madsen’s infrastructure. The prior operator built the mine on a tight budget, leaving several critical projects incomplete. These omissions led to inefficiencies that hampered productivity.
West Red Lake Gold tackled these issues directly by finishing important infrastructure projects. These projects boost efficiency throughout the mine:
- Connection Drift: An underground highway to move material smoothly within the mine.
- On Site Camp: Quality accommodation facilities to attract and retain good staff.
- Mine Dry Facility: Enlarging spaces for workers to prepare for shifts.
- Maintenance Shop: Enabling proper equipment upkeep for higher availability.
- Primary Crusher Upgrade: Improving rock processing capacity.
- Tailings Dam Lift: Setting up waste management capabilities proactively.
These upgrades have made Madsen more efficient. Now, it can handle modern production needs and reduce downtime.
Operational Readiness: Building for Success
Mines are complex systems that require careful preparation before full-scale operations can begin. West Red Lake Gold understands this and has prioritized building out, testing, and refining each component of Madsen’s operations before starting production at full capacity.
The company has made significant progress in preparing Madsen Mine for its restart. Underground development rates are steadily increasing, ensuring access to multiple mining areas. Also, mining operations have achieved consistent accuracy while daily tonnage has risen as planned.
The mill, restarted after 28 months of dry shutdown, has operated smoothly following extensive pre-commissioning efforts. A high-grade ore stockpile is growing toward the 30,000-tonne goal, providing over a month of operational flexibility.
Safety remains a top priority, with a strong culture reinforced across the workforce. Additionally, over 200 personnel have been hired, ensuring the mine is staffed for efficient operations.
This focus on operational readiness means testing equipment, systems, and processes. The company wants to ensure they are reliable from day one. By addressing potential issues during the preparation phase, WRLG cut risks associated with startup delays or inefficiencies.
Lessons From the Past
Notably, restarting Madsen brings important lessons from past operators. A key takeaway is the need to align operational strategies with the unique characteristics of narrow vein deposits in Red Lake.
West Red Lake Gold’s adherence to best practices—such as tighter drill spacing and proactive access development—demonstrates its commitment to overcoming past challenges.
Also, the company has improved infrastructure and operational readiness. This has fixed issues that previously hurt productivity at Madsen. These measures not only enhance efficiency but also position the mine for long-term success.
A New Era for Madsen
Under West Red Lake Gold Mines, Madsen Mine is entering a new era defined by strategic planning, operational excellence, and sustainability. Madsen is now equipped to succeed where others struggled by addressing past shortcomings:
- Insufficient drill spacing,
- Lack of access to development, and
- Incomplete infrastructure.
The company takes a proactive approach that helps ensure accurate resource estimates. Its investments in infrastructure and readiness further support efficient production. WRLG’s focus on sustainability and responsibility in Madsen makes it a model for modern mining in Canada.
This time around, Madsen is set to work and thrive as Canada’s newest gold mine. With production slated to begin soon, stakeholders can look forward to a bright mining future driven by innovation, efficiency, and resilience.
DISCLAIMER
New Era Publishing Inc. and/or CarbonCredits.com (“We” or “Us”) are not securities dealers or brokers, investment advisers or financial advisers, and you should not rely on the information herein as investment advice. West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. made a one-time payment of $30,000 to provide marketing services for a term of 1 month. None of the owners, members, directors, or employees of New Era Publishing Inc. and/or CarbonCredits.com currently hold, or have any beneficial ownership in, any shares, stocks, or options in the companies mentioned. This article is informational only and is solely for use by prospective investors in determining whether to seek additional information. This does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Examples that we provide of share price increases pertaining to a particular Issuer from one referenced date to another represent an arbitrarily chosen time period and are no indication whatsoever of future stock prices for that Issuer and are of no predictive value. Our stock profiles are intended to highlight certain companies for your further investigation; they are not stock recommendations or constitute an offer or sale of the referenced securities. The securities issued by the companies we profile should be considered high risk; if you do invest despite these warnings, you may lose your entire investment. Please do your own research before investing, including reading the companies’ SEDAR+ and SEC filings, press releases, and risk disclosures. It is our policy that information contained in this profile was provided by the company, extracted from SEDAR+ and SEC filings, company websites, and other publicly available sources. We believe the sources and information are accurate and reliable but we cannot guarantee it.
CAUTIONARY STATEMENT AND FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION
Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information generally can be identified by words such as “anticipate”, “expect”, “estimate”, “forecast”, “planned”, and similar expressions suggesting future outcomes or events. Forward-looking information is based on current expectations of management; however, it is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information in this news release and include without limitation, statements relating to the plans and timing for the potential production of mining operations at the Madsen Mine, the potential (including the amount of tonnes and grades of material from the bulk sample program) of the Madsen Mine; the benefits of test mining; any untapped growth potential in the Madsen deposit or Rowan deposit; and the Company’s future objectives and plans. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
Forward-looking information involve numerous risks and uncertainties and actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking information. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, market volatility; the state of the financial markets for the Company’s securities; fluctuations in commodity prices; timing and results of the cleanup and recovery at the Madsen Mine; and changes in the Company’s business plans. Forward-looking information is based on a number of key expectations and assumptions, including without limitation, that the Company will continue with its stated business objectives and its ability to raise additional capital to proceed. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Additional information about risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company’s management’s discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2024, and the Company’s annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2024, copies of which are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.
The forward-looking information contained herein is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking information reflects management’s current beliefs and is based on information currently available to the Company. The forward-looking information is made as of the date of this news release and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required by applicable law.
For more information on the Company, investors should review the Company’s continuous disclosure filings that are available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca.
Please read our Full RISKS and DISCLOSURE here.
The post Why Madsen Will Work This Time: A Smarter Start for a Legendary Gold Mine appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy11 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits