It’s been around eight years in the making, but the millionth ounce of gold has officially been poured at the Bell Creek mill north of Porcupine.

The first bar was poured in 2009 when the mill was owned by Lakeshore Gold.

Tahoe Canada Vice President of Operations Peter Van Alphen says it’s a collective effort of about 650 people to produce that one bar of gold, which is worth around $1.2-million dollars.

“We’re pleased to celebrate this significant achievement in just over 8 years with our employees, contractors, community and our Aboriginal partners,” Van Alphen says.

“Our goal is to ensure that our next millionth ounce of gold is produced with continued operational excellence, strong environmental stewardship and a leading safety culture.”

The bar itself is about 55 lbs and about 88 per cent gold.

Other minerals like silver and copper are also in the bar. Once it leaves the mill, it’ll go to a refinery to upgrade and remove those excess minerals and bring the bar up to about 99.9 per cent gold.

And then afterwards, it gets sold and ends up in such things like wedding rings, a vault, high-tech wiring or even windows of a spacecraft.

“There’s a lot of uses for gold out there that people don’t realize,” says Mill Superintendent Dave Felsher.

As for the full mining operations, Van Alphen says production has been on a steady pace. But there’s more work ahead with the expansion of both the Bell Creek and Timmins West sites.

The Bell Creek site will double in production, starting in the middle of next year with new infrastructure going in place.

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