Fortitude Gold has obtained all required permits for its Scarlet South project in Nevada, US, allowing the company to build and operate the Scarlet South open-pit gold mine.
Approvals were granted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
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The new mine will be developed on the Isabella Pearl property in Mineral County, Nevada.
The Scarlet South open-pit project lies approximately 500m north-west of the company’s active Isabella Pearl mine, along with its heap leach pad and an adsorption, desorption and recovery processing plant.
Fortitude Gold expects to begin mining at Scarlet South within the next few weeks, further boosting its gold production capacity in Nevada.
The company intends to operate both the Pearl Deep and Scarlet South projects concurrently.
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By GlobalDataThis strategy will enable Fortitude Gold to rotate equipment and crews between the two sites, improving efficiency while utilising existing shared processing infrastructure.
Scarlet South mineralisation will be hauled a short distance to the Isabella Pearl facilities, keeping capital costs low and supporting a faster construction timeline.
It is expected to become the second open-pit gold mine on the Isabella Pearl property, which hosts a 10km mineralised trend and several other exploration targets.
With Scarlet South added, Fortitude Gold’s permitted-mine portfolio includes the producing Isabella Pearl mine and the newly permitted County Line mine.
All three mines are scheduled for production in the first quarter of 2026 (Q1 2026).
Fortitude Gold CEO and president Jason Reid said: “It is refreshing to see the Trump Administration not only issue permits at Scarlet South and County Line, but they have refocused attention on the FAST-41 programme with much needed transparency to help expedite mine permits, many of which were delayed under the Biden era permit backlog.
“With Scarlet South and County Line permits now in hand, we expect to be mining from three different mining locations in Q1 2026, with all mineralisation trucked and processed at our Isabella Pearl facility. Our Golden Mile project has been included on the BLM’s FAST-41 dashboard, which helps shareholders track permitting progress.”
Fortitude Gold has not yet published a reserve estimate for Scarlet South but expects mining to continue through the 2026 calendar year.
The company adds that both Scarlet South and Scarlet North could be expanded with additional exploration, which had previously been slowed by a permitting backlog under the previous administration.
