McEwen Mining will purchase Primero Mining’s Black Fox complex in the Timmins gold camp for $35 million, the company announced on August 10. This is the company’s second acquisition in the well-known Ontario mining camp this year and will be its first producing mine in Canada.

McEwen will get the Black Fox underground mine and mill, the Grey Fox development project and the Pike River exploration property in the deal.

“This acquisition will add immediately to our gold production, but it is just the beginning of a new chapter of growth for McEwen Mining,” Rob McEwen, the company’s chairman and chief owner, said in a news release.

The purchase follows McEwen’s acquisition of Lexam VG Gold, a junior miner with advanced exploration-stage properties in the Timmins camp, earlier this year. In that deal, announced in February, McEwen became the 100 per cent owner of Lexam’s Buffalo Ankerite, Fuller and Davidson Tisdale properties, and took a 61 per cent interest in the Paymaster property. Goldcorp holds the other 39 per cent.

McEwen also took over Lexam’s four past-producing gold properties “with open-pit and underground potential” in the Abitibi greenstone belt.

“Black Fox makes a lot of sense for us. It is a producing mine with spare milling capacity for Lexam ore,” Nathan Stubina, McEwen’s managing director, told CIM Magazine in an email. “So it gives us ounces today and fits in with our future growth plans.”

McEwen operates the El Gallo complex in Sinaloa, Mexico, and is developing phase two of that project, and owns a 49 per cent interest in the San Jose silver-gold mine in Argentina. It also has development- and exploration-stage projects in those countries, and in Nevada.

Black Fox produced 20,731 ounces of gold in the second quarter of 2017. It is expected to produce between 50,000 to 60,000 ounces of gold this year.

Primero said offloading the project is part of its ongoing “strategic review process” to reduce its debt.

The deal is expected to close later this year.