McEwen Mining’s recent Canadian acquisitions led to a 51 per cent increase in production of gold equivalent ounces (GEO) in the third quarter, compared to last year.

The company released its third quarter results on Tuesday, reporting a quarterly net loss of US$13.3 million, which it said was because it had spent US$35.5 million in the quarter to “further [its] long-term production growth plans” at its Gold Bar, Black Fox, Fenix and Los Azules projects. Its exploration costs this quarter were US$8.16 million, compared to $2.207 million in the third quarter of 2017.

The company reported it had reduced its all-in sustaining costs per GEO by three per cent in comparison to Q3 2017.

McEwen purchased the Black Fox complex in Timmins from Primero Mining in August 2017, which came shortly after the company acquired Lexam VG Gold, a company with several exploration projects in the same area.

Black Fox saw the most exploration investment from the company in 2018. Out of the company’s US$28.721 million total exploration expenditure for the year, US$17.4 million was spent on the property around Black Fox.

Related: Rob McEwen discusses progress at McEwen's Nevada gold project and his Canadian investment strategy

Despite already having a functioning mine at the Black Fox property, the high level of exploration spending there reflects chief owner and chairman Rob McEwen’s strategy towards finding new gold deposits.

“I saw a number of prospectors that showed me property packages and they showed me that they kept discovering new deposits,” McEwen said in a conference call with investors. “[When I was at Goldcorp] we took a mine that had been starved of capital for 15 years … it was thought to have a short life of three years. At the bottom, a mile below surface, we found what became one of the richest gold mines in the world. It defied a lot of the geological thinking of the time.”

McEwen said there are still deposits to be found around operating mines; they just might require more work.

The report also said US$5.5 million was spent on exploration at its Los Azules project in Argentina and US$4.2 million was spent at its Gold Bar project in Nevada, which it expects to complete construction on by the end of the year.