- Ventilation upgrade at Tuvatu Gold Mine significantly enhances underground development.
- Q1 2025 gold production sees a 155% year-over-year increase, but drops from the previous quarter.
- Expansion plans set to double current processing capacity by 2026.
Lion One Metals Limited (LIO) has successfully completed a major ventilation upgrade at its Tuvatu Gold Mine in Fiji. This enhancement has doubled the airflow at the main portal, providing access to the high-grade Zone 500 feeder zone, where drilling has revealed bonanza-grade results, including 75.9m of 20.86 g/t gold. The company is poised to expand its underground development, adding more mineralized headings into production.
During Q1 2025, Lion One reported a gold production of 3,555 ounces from 27,841 tonnes milled, with an average grade of 4.9 g/t gold and an 80.4% recovery rate. This marks a 155% increase from the same quarter last year. However, the production has decreased from 4,300 ounces in Q4 2024, primarily due to maintenance-related downtime and adverse weather conditions affecting operations in January and February 2025.
The company is currently operating at a pilot plant phase of 300 tonnes per day (TPD) and plans to expand capacity to 600-700 TPD by 2026. The Tuvatu site is witnessing record development with 13 active mining headings, and the first shrinkage stope along the Ura1 lode is underway. This stope, expected to begin production between May and June 2025, has shown high-grade potential with previous drilling results of 142.66 g/t gold over 2.2 meters.
