Heliostar - Operations, Development & Exploration Update: La Colorada Open-Pit Expansion
The KE Report Sep 18, 2026 9:32
Summary
Heliostar Metals joined the GDXJ (the junior gold miners' benchmark index), a milestone management expects to broaden institutional ownership and liquidity.
Open-pit mining has begun at La Colorada's Veta Madre pit, shifting production from residual leach-pad recovery to higher-grade stacked ore.
La Colorada now supports a roughly six-year mine life near $1,800/oz AISC (All-In Sustaining Cost — the full cost to produce an ounce).
Drilling at the Goldstrike project in Utah targets high-grade antimony alongside gold, with a critical-mineral angle that could aid economics and permitting.
Ana Paula is the biggest value driver: a feasibility update is due shortly and first gold pour is targeted for 2028.
Charles Funk's takeaways
- Top takeaway Argues the GDXJ inclusion is a milestone earned through years of growth that will force index-tracking investors to pay attention to Heliostar and support the share price.
- Frames La Colorada as a staged turnaround — a care-and-maintenance purchase, then stockpile cash flow, then injection leaching — now replaced by a permitted open pit anchoring six years of production.
- Contends antimony's importance to US geopolitical interests gives Goldstrike standalone critical-minerals potential that could improve the gold deposit's economics and permitting pathway.
- Argues companies entering construction — the back end of the Lassonde curve — have historically outperformed the GDXJ by 50 to 100 percent, which is why Ana Paula commands the company's attention.
- Sequences the development pipeline as Ana Paula, then Serra de Gaya, then Goldstrike on a best-opportunity-wins basis, advancing toward a 500,000-ounce-per-year company gold target.