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About four months into the planned two-year construction of Argonaut Gold’s (TSX: AR) new cornerstone Magino project in Ontario, smooth progress and encouraging new exploration results have CEO Peter Dougherty in a forward-thinking mood.

While Argonaut is crossing off early construction milestones at the C$480 to C$510 million mine build, the company continues to report high-grade gold intercepts from ongoing exploration initiatives below and next to the project’s defined open-pit boundaries.

Dougherty says the deeper the company drills at Magino, the better the grades get. Ongoing drilling at the 2.14 million oz. reserve property is increasingly finding evidence of shared characteristics with the deposit’s closest analogues, Alamos Gold’s (TSX: AGI) Island Gold mine immediately next door (1.22 million oz. in reserves), and Wesdome Gold Mines’ (TSX: WDO) Eagle River (581,000 oz. in reserves), about 70 km on strike to the west.

The Magino property is in the Goudreau-Lochalsh gold district of the Wawa gold camp, which itself sits within the Michipicoten greenstone belt of the Archean Superior Province. The Michipicoten greenstone belt is described as a structurally and stratigraphically complex collection of volcanic, sedimentary and intrusive rocks that were metamorphosed to greenschist and amphibolite facies.

The near-pit Elbow and Central zones are emerging as priority new exploration areas showing promising high-grade gold continuity.

“In a perfect world, we want to continue to undertake infill drilling at denser fences on these deposits to incorporate them in any conceptual economic study considering a 20,000 tonne per day scenario as soon as possible,” Dougherty says in an interview. “By the time we press the green button on Magino production, we want to press go on the expansion feasibility study simultaneously.”