ESAUF Fires Up a New Gold Operation as Goldman Sachs Targets $4,900

For any junior miner, the dream is to find a world-class discovery. The nightmare is running out of money before you can prove it. At its Montauban Project in Quebec, ESGold Corp. (CSE: $ESAU) (OTCQB: $ESAUF) believes it has the dream in its sights: geological proof of a potential "Broken Hill-Type" system, a legendary ore body with a multi-hundred-billion-dollar pedigree.

The evidence is compelling: a deep geophysical survey imaging the system down to 1,200 meters and the discovery of rhodonite, a critical indicator mineral. But a theory, even a proven one, is worthless without the capital to drill it. Now, with a single deal, ESGold has solved the nightmare.

On October 2nd, ESGold announced a $9 million working capital facility with Ocean Partners UK Limited, and the terms of the deal were designed to address the exact issues that kill most junior producers. The facility is completely non-dilutive, with no warrants, no conversion features, and no mechanism that quietly destroys the share structure over time. It provides the cornerstone of the funding required to bring the Montauban Gold Project in Quebec to production, and repayment is tied exclusively to operating cash flow, which eliminates any scenario where the company has to circle back to shareholders asking for emergency funding.

Beyond the financing itself, Ocean Partners agreed to purchase 100% of the gold and silver production from Montauban. The company locked in a guaranteed buyer before pouring its first ounce, removing the market and logistics risk that can destabilize junior producers during their first year of operations.

The economics backing this deal explain why it was structured this way. Montauban is a tailings reprocessing operation, which means the ore is already mined, crushed, and sitting on the surface. The project is fully permitted, and in June, the company installed the Humphrey Spirals, the core gravity separation system designed to process 1,000 tons per day. The production timeline, originally targeting late 2025, is now advancing into 2026 as the final infrastructure comes together.

The project's 2025 Preliminary Economic Assessment, focused solely on the tailings operation, delivered a 60.3% after-tax Internal Rate of Return, more than double the 23.4% IRR the project showed in the 2023 study. The after-tax Net Present Value came in at $24.27 million, with a payback period of less than two years. Over its four-year life of mine, the project is projected to generate $103.73 million in revenue against just $32.57 million in operating costs.

The kicker here? Those numbers were calculated using a gold price of $2,900 per ounce, a deliberately conservative figure set below market to provide a cushion. With gold currently trading over $4,300 per ounce at the time of this writing, it seems there is plenty of cushion in those numbers. ESGold is launching a high-margin production operation into a market that is nearly 50% richer than the price used to design the project. With capital and operating costs already locked in, the additional revenue from higher gold prices flows almost entirely to cash flow.

The cash that Montauban generates is the engine for the company’s entire growth strategy. Its primary purpose is to self-fund the systematic exploration of the massive "Broken Hill-Type" prize lying deep beneath the surface at Montauban. At the same time, the revenue will be used to support ESGold's expansion into Colombia, funding high-grade exploration at the Bolívar concession, where historical reports show a massive 3.4-kilometer mineralized corridor with channel samples hitting a stunning 170 grams per ton gold, while also allowing the company to self-fund a duplication of its Montauban tailings project.

Gold has surged over 25% since the start of 2025, driven by central bank demand, inflation hedging, and a weaker U.S. dollar. Goldman Sachs is now projecting gold could reach $4,900 per ounce if current market dynamics continue. While most junior miners are still trying to figure out how to finance their next drill program without destroying their share structure, ESGold has its capital locked, its buyer committed, the equipment installed, and a dual-pronged exploration pipeline aimed at two world-class targets, funded entirely by its own cash flow. The company structured itself to avoid the risks that kill most juniors, and it is now launching a cash-generating operation into a gold market trading nearly 50% above the conservative assumptions that were used to validate the project.

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