Fortitude Gold Corporation (QB)【FTCO】株式ニュース

Fortitude Builds a Golden Future
May 2026 | Nevada Mining

Small U.S. gold producer permits properties in central Nevada to maintain gold production

By Steve Fiscor, Editor-in-Chief
Fortitude Gold operates three mines, Isabella Pearl, Scarlet South and County Line, in Mineral and Nye Counties, Nevada. The company has a total of seven high-grade gold properties located in the Walker Lane mineral belt and an eighth high-grade gold property in west central Nevada. The company owns all its properties, and 60% of the East Camp Douglas joint venture (JV).

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Using a hub-and-spoke strategy, Fortitude recovers gold from satellite mines at the Isabella Pearl plant, an absorption, desorption and recovery (ADR) facility that recovers gold from the heap leach process. The surrounding mines are relatively small pits operating in oxide caps and they truck ore to the Isabella Pearl leach pad.

Fortitude is currently paying the price from a permitting backlog under the previous Biden administration, which delayed the start-up of new mines feeding the hub. “Our ability to execute our business plan is directly tied to our ability to acquire the needed permits to bring new mines into production,” said Fortitude President and CEO Jason Reid. “With the new Trump Administration’s pro-business and pro-mining stance, the Biden era hangover is now lifting.”

The rich pink ore zone can been seen in the Pearl Deep pit just before the layback. (Photo: Steve Fiscor)

While Reid said he and the company were relieved to have been granted a new mine permit at year-end 2025, the Biden hangover for most of 2025 proved to be the most challenging year in the company’s history. “Our goal now is to obtain as many additional permits as possible under the Trump Administration just in case the American people vote back into power an anti-business and anti-mining administration again in the future,” he said.

Fortitude overcame many challenges in 2025, Reid explained. “As we waited for Trump to clear the massive Biden permit backlog, we took decisive action to protect shareholder value and preserve capital,” he said. The company reduced its dividend by 75%, suspended drilling programs, moved the home office to a modest space in south Colorado Springs, Colo., and eliminated employee bonuses.

In late 2025, the Trump Administration approved permits for the County Line mine and a connection to grid power at Isabella Pearl. In early 2026, they received permits for the Scarlet South project. With these permits and approvals in place, Fortitude began construction of two new mines and is in the process of connecting Isabella Pearl to grid power, which is expected to reduce energy costs by $80,000 to $100,000 per month.

Fortitude recently completed a $12 million private placement, which is being used to optimize the two new mines, and restart exploration drilling activities to identify more resources and extend mine life.

During March, Fortitude announced the JV agreement with Hawthorne Land & Minerals, LLC to accelerate exploration at its East Camp Douglas property. Under the agreement, approximately $40 million is expected to be deployed at East Camp Douglas over the next two years to expedite deposit discovery and project advancement. Fortitude is the majority owner of the JV (60%), and it will have operational control as the project advances. If exploration proves successful, the JV will fast-track East Camp Douglas toward production.

Regaining Its Momentum
During 2025, Fortitude sold 5,774 ounces (oz) of gold and 35,091 oz of silver, a considerable decrease over 2024. After byproduct credit for silver production, the company’s total gold cash costs were a respectable $1,104/oz. With an average 2025 sales price of $3,235/oz, the company recorded revenues of $18.4 million, and pretax net income of $400,000. Fortitude produced 15,825 oz of gold and 61,536 oz of silver in 2024. The total gold cash costs in 2024 were $827/oz and the company sold its gold for an average realized price of $966/oz.

During 2025, the company placed 145,868 metric tons (mt) of ore with a grade of 0.39 g/mt on the leach pad. That compares to 447,304 mt of ore at a grade of 0.57 g/mt in 2024. During 2025, they moved 1.8 million mt of waste compared to 1.38 million mt in 2024.

The company recently reported Q1 2026 gold production of 688 oz, which was a combination of mining from the Pearl Deep, County Line, Scarlet South and residual leach. During the quarter, the company installed a new 800 mt/h crusher to size ore before it’s placed on the leach pad at the Isabella Pearl mine. Both County Line and Scarlet South initiated mining operations during the quarter. The company is ramping up and planning to produce more gold in future quarters.

Isabella Pearl is mining from the Pearl Deep and Scarlet South pits. The top of the mineralized horizon at Pearl Deep was intercepted during Q4 2025 with mine operations estimated to continue into H2 2026. In January, the company began to place ore from Scarlet South and County Line pits on the leach pad. Exploration efforts in 2026 will focus on expanding mineralization at Scarlet South and North, as well as the County Line mine. The company also plans to expand the Isabella Pearl heap leach pad in 2026 to accommodate the additional ore from the three mines.

The rich pink ore zone can been seen in the Pearl Deep pit just before the layback. (Photo: Steve Fiscor)

Permitting More Properties
The company’s Golden Mile project has been included in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Fast-41 transparency permitting project with an estimated final approval by Q2 2027. Fortitude is advancing a phase one open pit shell design at Golden Mile targeting production from near surface gold mineralization with further delineation efforts expected to add additional open pit phases. Golden Mile will use heap leach for gold recovery. The loaded carbon will be trucked to the Isabella Pearl ADR plant for final doré production.

The company is currently in the process of permitting an Environmental Assessment (EA) for East Camp Douglas with the BLM and hoping for EA approvals by H2 2026.

The company is also advancing Scarlet North toward production permitting with the BLM. Required studies and surveys have been initiated and the company expects to file for permits in the coming months. In addition, the company also expects to file an exploration EA for the acreage located north and east of Scarlet North in the coming months, which would open a significant area of prospective exploration.

Fortitude recently purchased five Komatsu 785 haul trucks and is operating the mine themselves now. (Photo: Steve Fiscor)

Isabella Pearl Bustles With Activity
E&MJ visited the bustling Isabella Pearl mine in April. At the time of the visit, the company was commissioning a new crusher and starting the layback for the Pearl Deep pit. Trucks were arriving on site with ore from the County Line mine.

Mark Henry has served as the general manager for the operation since it broke ground seven years ago. “We are processing large amounts of relatively low-grade ore, and the new crusher allows us to put more tons on the leach pad,” Henry said. “An 800 tph crusher is massive for us. The trucks are delivering ore from the County Line mine 20 miles away, which adds a higher-grade ore to the mix.

“We used to operate the mine under a contract,” Henry said. “We bought five Komatsu HD785 100-ton haul trucks, a Komatsu WA900 wheel loader and other ancillary equipment and we are running it ourselves now.”

Back in the day, Isabella Pearl produced heap leachable ore running at an average grade of more than 5 g/mt, which was unheard of, Henry recalled. “The first five years for Isabella Pearl were just amazing, and this layback will provide access to more high-grade ore at the end of this pit,” he said.

The mine uses a Komatsu single pass drill on 24-ft benches with a 4-ft subdrill. That bench height works well for the wheel loader, Henry explained, which loads the trucks in four passes. Ore is crushed to minus 3/4-in. and the operation uses Superior stackers to place the ore on the leach pad. A small dozer spreads the ore at the discharge point to create the cell before they install the drip lines.

Henry and his team are looking forward to a new leach pad expansion, and they currently have dozens of new Superior stackers ready to go.

The mine, which generates power from diesel gensets, expects to connect to grid power shortly. Isabella Pearl sits near an old FMC mine, which had installed a new substation just before it closed. “The connection was easy and relatively inexpensive,” Henry said. “The difficult part was permitting the 4-mile power line, which took four years.”

The ADR plant is the pearl these days at Isabella Pearl. It operates as a closed-loop system. Pregnant solution is pumped to a set of five carbon-in-liquid (CIL) columns. In the adsorption process, gold and silver adhere to the activated carbon in the CIL columns. The loaded carbon drops out and is recovered with fine screens.

Gold and silver is attached to activated carbon in five CIL tanks before entering the ADR plant. (Photo: Steve Fiscor)

In the desorption process, the loaded carbon is washed with a hot caustic soda and sodium cyanide solution under pressure (285°F at 65 psi) to release the gold and silver back into a concentrated solution (eluate). The eluate passes through an electrowinning (EW) cell, where the precious metals attach to cathodes (strips), as a sludge, which is later refined into gold doré.

“These days the plant produces about four strips per week, and we pour doré every two weeks,” Henry said. “Eventually, we will be processing carbon recovered from the Golden Mile operation. We have a second strip vessel that we can add to handle the extra production.”

Isabella Pearl also has an onsite lab where they test samples taken throughout the mining and recovery process. They regularly perform fire assays, but they rely more on the Atomic Adsorption spectrometer.

They routinely evaluate the grade from blasthole samples and enter the information into pit modeling software, which better defines the ore and waste zones for them. When they mine through the area, they analyze another set of samples as a set of checks and balances. “The process takes about a day or so, but we can get results in 90 minutes if we needed to,” Henry said.

The Pearl Deep layback and Scarlet South will provide ore for the leach pad this year. Scarlet North, County Line and Golden Mile will build momentum next year, Henry explained, and add multiple years of production after that. “East Camp Douglas will be a big property,” Henry said. “There was a lot of historic mining up there. The old timers always seemed to know where to find the gold.” Fortitude is currently fast tracking the Golden Mile, which sits about 35-40 miles from Isabella Pearl.

https://www.e-mj.com/news/nevada-mining/fortitude-builds-a-golden-future/