Lundin Gold Drills 124 Grams per Tonne Beside Its Fruta del Norte Mine

Lundin Gold's October 26, 2026 drilling release sets out hole numbers, depths, grades, the laboratory and the qualified person who approved it. The best of it is 124.27 grams of gold per tonne over 11.00 metres, drilled at FDNS, a deposit directly south of the company's Fruta del Norte mine in southeast Ecuador.

The same release reported the highest-grade interval the company has recorded at Bonza Sur, a target further south, and said conversion drilling has started at FDN East, a third deposit less than 100 metres from the mine's infrastructure.

A working mine with three deposits on its doorstep

Lundin Gold runs one mine. Fruta del Norte, known as FDN, is an underground gold mine, and the company reported on October 8 that it produced 153,736 ounces in the third quarter of 2026, the most in any quarter since commercial production began. The mill fed ore at an average of 10.1 grams per tonne.

All of the company's gold comes from that one operation in Ecuador, so the deposits around it bear directly on how long its output holds.

Grams per tonne is how gold grade is measured. A tonne of rock carrying 10 grams of gold holds about a third of an ounce.

The three deposits in the October 26 release sit around that mine. FDNS lies directly south of it. FDN East is a buried deposit of the same family, described in the release as epithermal, meaning it formed from hot fluids close to surface. Bonza Sur sits south of FDNS and is drilled from surface.

The company's case for them rests on their position. Ore found next to an operating mine can use the same tunnels, mill and power, which is why the company calls this work near-mine exploration.

Eleven metres at 124 grams, measured along the hole

The headline hole, FDN-C26-535, cut 124.27 grams per tonne over 11.00 metres. Inside that interval, one metre assayed 1,290.00 grams per tonne.

Two terms explain those numbers. An "including" interval is a shorter, richer stretch inside a longer one, reported so the grade is not hidden in an average. And the lengths are core lengths: the distance measured along the drill hole, which can be longer than the true thickness of the zone when the hole crosses it at an angle. The release states that the highlighted intervals are not true widths.

FDNS gave more than one strong hole, as the table below shows. Five underground rigs are at work there, and the company has drilled about 22,979 metres at FDNS since January.

Bonza Sur's best hole carried 242.64 grams per tonne over 3.30 metres, which the release calls the highest-grade interval ever recorded at the deposit. Three surface rigs are drilling the northern part of that target.

Samples were prepared by ALS in Quito and assayed by ALS in Lima using a 50-gram fire assay, with certified standards, blanks and duplicates inserted as checks. Andre Oliveira, P.Geo, the company's vice-president of exploration, approved the technical content as the qualified person under NI 43-101, the Canadian rule for how mining companies report technical results.

Conversion drilling turns a discovery into mine plan

Most of the FDNS holes are labelled conversion drilling, and the label says where the deposit stands.

Miners sort their estimates of the metal in the ground, called mineral resources, by confidence. Inferred is the lowest category: enough drilling to say the gold is there, not enough to plan a mine around it. Indicated means the holes are close enough together to model the shape and grade with more confidence. Only measured and indicated material can become a reserve, the part a company has shown it can mine at a profit.

Conversion drilling fills in the gaps between existing holes so inferred material can move up a category. The release says the FDNS programme is meant to upgrade inferred resources to indicated and support further reserve additions.

FDNS has already started that climb. In its statement of February 17, 2026, Lundin Gold declared an inaugural probable reserve at FDNS of 0.54 million ounces, about 18 months after the deposit was discovered.

FDN East is a step behind, with an inferred resource of 0.42 million ounces in that same statement. One underground rig has drilled about 4,237 metres there since August, mostly in the western part.

A tunnel is also being driven toward the deposit. By September 30 it had advanced 39 metres, and the company says it will give the drills better access and support possible future production.

The reserve grew after a year of mining

A mine that finds more gold than it digs can keep its output steady. The February statement shows that happened in 2025.

At the end of 2025, company-wide proven and probable reserves stood at 5.85 million ounces. The company reported that total as up about 6 per cent from a year earlier, after mining depleted 0.53 million ounces during 2025.

Work it through. If reserves rose about 6 per cent while 0.53 million ounces were mined out, additions to the reserve exceeded what the mine took out in 2025. That is one year, measured by the company's own statement; earlier years sit in earlier statements.

Jamie Beck, president and chief executive, described the October results as near-mine exploration. "Our near-mine exploration programs continue to deliver exceptional results at FDNS, FDN East, and Bonza Sur," Beck said in the release, adding that the company is increasingly confident in the deposits' "combined potential to sustain production at current levels."

High grades in a narrow hole, set against the mill

The drill grades are many times the mine's reserve grade of about 7 grams per tonne, and the difference has a simple cause.

A drill hole samples a cylinder of rock a few centimetres across. A reserve grade averages whole blocks of rock, including the lower-grade material a miner has to take out alongside the rich veins. High-grade intervals like these show where the richest gold sits. The resource model decides how much of it a mine can carry.

Estimators often cap very rich assays at a set ceiling before modelling, so that a few samples do not lift a whole block; the October 26 release reports the grades as assayed and leaves that step to the estimate.

Where the year's production stands

The mine is on track for its stated range with one quarter left. Lundin Gold's guidance for 2026 is 475,000 to 525,000 ounces. It produced 392,472 ounces in the first nine months.

That leaves 82,528 ounces to reach the low end. The third quarter alone produced 153,736.

Lundin Gold realized an average of US$4,359 an ounce in the second quarter, according to its results of August 6, 2026.

Its all-in sustaining cost, the industry's measure of what it costs to produce and maintain output, was US$1,176 per ounce sold in that quarter.

The company held US$507 million in cash and cash equivalents as at June 30, 2026, as reported from its second-quarter financial statements in the same release.

The company expects to release third-quarter financial results on November 4, 2026, after the market closes. Those statements will carry the cash and cost figures that a production release does not.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the shares closed at C$87.34 on October 27, up 2.86 per cent, per end-of-day data read at 13:22 Pacific on October 27 from TMX Money. That is a market value of about C$21.1 billion on the listed share count TMX reports.

The next step is underground

The October 26 release describes conversion drilling at FDN East as now commencing, with the tunnel toward the deposit still advancing. After the November results comes the company's stated plan to update its reserve and resource estimates, which the forward-looking statements name without a date. Five rigs at FDNS are drilling toward that count now.