Seabridge Gold reported a substantial increase in its Inferred Resources of gold and copper for its Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) project. The new estimate, released on Tuesday, upped both the size and grade of the gold and copper resources at the project’s Iron Cap deposit.

The estimate, which incorporates 10,383 new metres of drilling, recorded an Inferred Resource of 1.29 million tonnes of ore graded at 0.48 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold and 0.30 per cent copper in inferred resources. The company’s previous September 2016 estimate recorded an Inferred Resource of 369,000 tonnes with a gold grade of 0.42 g/t and 0.22 per cent copper.

The company also increased the grade of its Inferred Resources of silver, to 2.9 g/t, up from 2.2 g/t in 2016.

Increasing the deposit’s known size was the goal of Seabridge’s 2017 drilling program. “All our objectives at Iron Cap were more than accomplished last year,” Rudi Fronk, Seabridge’s chairman and CEO, said in a release on Tuesday. “We believe Iron Cap has the potential to make a strong contribution to improving project economics thanks to its higher grade and its favorable capital and operating costs due to its location close to planned infrastructure.”

Fronk added that a “larger, richer Iron Cap deposit is expected to take a more prominent place” in the company’s mine planning for KSM.

Iron Cap is one of four gold and copper porphyry deposits within KSM, which is located in northwestern British Columbia. Currently, KSM’s mine plan proposes mining Iron Cap after the Mitchell, Kerr and Sulphurets deposits.