Fortune Bay (TSXV: FOR; US-OTC: FTBYF) is accelerating advancement of its Goldfields gold project in Saskatchewan as updated economics and higher gold prices strengthen the development case.
With funding in place for its 2026 program, drilling has resumed at Goldfields as the company advances prefeasibility-level technical studies, provincial permitting work and exploration.
“It’s an exceptional project that has some outstanding economics,” said Dale Verran, CEO of Fortune Bay. “Goldfields is more de-risked than you usually find for a preliminary economic assessment stage project.”
An updated PEA released in September outlined an after-tax project value of C$610 million ($442 million) at a base-case gold price of $2,600 per oz. At the spot gold price at the time of the study, about $3,650 per oz, the project’s after-tax value increased to C$1.25 billion.
"This project's very sensitive to gold price – it keeps looking better and better,” Verran said. “This year, we are going to focus on moving this project forward as quickly as we can.”
Located in northern Saskatchewan near Uranium City, the Goldfields project hosts the Box and Athona gold deposits in a historical mining district with established infrastructure, including road access and grid power. The Box deposit was mined underground between 1939 and 1942, producing 64,000 oz. of gold.
Goldfields hosts a mineral resource of 25 million tonnes grading 1.28 grams gold for 990,000 oz. in the Indicated category and 7.4 million tonnes grading 0.9 grams gold for 210,000 oz. in the Inferred category, supporting its advancement as a development-stage asset.
"With 97% of the updated PEA resources in the indicated category, we can take this directly to reserves in a prefeasibility study,” Verran said. “So the resource base is already highly de-risked.”
The ongoing exploration program is focused on expanding resources at Goldfields, where both the Box and Athona deposits remain open.
Exploration drilling has begun at the Box deposit to test down-dip extensions, with plans to move to a number of historical prospects on the property, including Golden Pond, Triangle and Frontier, which have seen limited modern drilling despite what Verran calls encouraging historic results. Initial assay results from the program are expected this quarter.
“This is a really good opportunity for us to go to where there's known mineralization and to test the size of these systems on the project to expand the resources,” Verran said. “Our exploration has the potential to make an already great project even better.”
Development plans are structured to keep mill throughput below 5,000 tonnes per day, allowing the project to remain under Saskatchewan’s provincial permitting framework. “By not going through federal reviews, we can expedite it,” Verran said.
Prefeasibility work includes geotechnical, metallurgical and waste rock studies aimed at refining pit and infrastructure design and supporting permitting, with results to be integrated into a technical proposal informed by recent environmental baseline work.
The project also benefits from a provincially approved environmental impact statement dating back to 2008 for a similarly sized open-pit operation at 5,000 tonnes per day. The inclusion of the Athona deposit in the mine plan changes the scope and will require a larger tailings storage facility than the one in the existing approval. Additional environmental studies were completed in late 2025, with final reporting continuing into early 2026.
The company plans to submit a technical proposal to Saskatchewan regulators this quarter, formally initiating the next stage of provincial environmental assessment while continuing prefeasibility-level technical work in parallel.
Fortune Bay has maintained engagement with local Indigenous communities and municipalities since 2020 and operates under an exploration agreement signed in 2022 that provides consent through the feasibility stage.
In November, the company began early dialogue on potential mine development, completing a series of community meetings near the project area as part of its broader permitting and development work.
Verran said Fortune Bay will continue to engage the community as it moves through the prefeasibility stage.
Beyond Goldfields, Fortune Bay also holds the Poma Rosa gold-copper project in Chiapas, Mexico, and an optioned portfolio of uranium exploration projects in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin.
“The uranium projects are non-dilutive; they don't cost the company anything…they're funded by partners,” Verran said. “We’ll be drilling those this year, so there's upside for discovery.”
But at the moment, Verran said the company’s primary focus is capitalizing on the momentum at Goldfields.
“Saskatchewan is Canada's top-ranked jurisdiction, which permits and operates uranium mines far more complicated than what we are dealing with here,” Verran said. “Our project's very simple metallurgically, it's very clean.”
Fortune Bay is in the process of building a team to take the project forward and recently hired Ron Halas as senior mine advisor. He has 35 years of global mining and project development experience spanning open pit and underground gold mining, feasibility studies, mine construction, permitting and operations.
“This is a project that not many people really know about,” Verran said. “We’re going to close that valuation gap with our peers that are more advanced at PFS by taking this project forward. It has the merits and fundamentals to become a near-term, highly profitable mine.”
The preceding Joint Venture video is PROMOTED CONTENT sponsored by Fortune Bay and produced in co-operation with The Northern Miner. Visit https://fortunebaycorp.com for more information.
February 9, 2026
February 9, 2026
February 9, 2026
February 9, 2026
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