Kensington Exploration Delivers High Grades and Vein Continuity
Photo Credit: Alaska Business Archives | Coeur Alaska
Coeur Alaska reports high grade results from drilling at its Kensington underground gold mine north of Juneau and continuity across veins at the Elmira expansion.
Drilling at the Upper and Lower Kensington zones encountered multiple parallel veins returning grades as rich as 11.5 ounces per ton over mineable widths. Further, a new discovery at the Elmira Hanging Wall Mineralization identified another area for future expansion potential. The company expects the deposits to extend Kensington’s working life by through 2029.
A Foundation and a Springboard
“Drill results at Kensington continue to be excellent, with high-grades and wide intercepts encountered in Elmira and in Upper and Lower Kensington,” says Aoife McGrath, senior vice president of exploration at Chicago-based Coeur Mining. “In addition to maintaining the current mine life, the team is positioned to commence scout drilling to build the pipeline of targets for future growth. As a foundation for this next chapter of Kensington’s growth, detailed structural modeling for the Kensington deposit is almost complete, with additional geochemistry, geophysics, and district-scale studies being designed and implemented.”
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May 2026
In Upper Kensington, drilling returned higher grades over significant widths. More than seventy-five drilled holes showed significant intercepts assayed above 1 ounce of gold per ton.
Kensington consists of multiple vein deposits across a mile-wide east-west zone which includes Kensington, Elmira, Raven, Johnson, plus numerous other prospective zones outside of the main corridor.
“The recently concluded multi-year exploration and development program, which helped drive an increase in its reserve-based mine life to five years, is serving as a springboard for replacing depletion and is identifying potential sources of higher-grade material while providing Kensington with significantly enhanced operational flexibility,” says Coeur Mining Chairman, CEO, and President Mitchell J. Krebs. “Our sustained focus on organic growth through brownfield exploration over the past several years continues to set us apart by generating multiple new discoveries and driving consistent reserve and resource increases, leading to meaningful mine life extensions and higher returns on invested capital across the portfolio.”
Coeur Alaska’s Kensington mine is the second-largest private employer in Southeast. It began operations in 2010 and employs nearly 400 people.
The company also announced that drilling at its Las Chispas underground silver and gold mine in Sonora, Mexico, hit bonanza grades in multiple veins. Based on that success, near-mine expansion and infill programs have been ramped up to nine drill rigs to target additional resource growth.
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