Yukon hardrock mining, development and exploration overview 2023

Despite tough market conditions, the Yukon saw another year of significant exploration results and new discoveries. At the time of writing, Yukon Geological Survey (YGS) estimated exploration expenditures in the territory to be $147M for the year, based on company press releases, SEDAR (System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval Overview) postings and conversations with industry clients. This estimate is up 18% from $124M in 2022 (Fig. 1). Development expenditures for 2023 are estimated to be $95M (Fig. 1) and mineral production is estimated to be $495M (approximately 87% attributed to gold production, 10% to silver production and 3% to copper production), down from a total of $543M in 2022; Fig. 2).1 It was a challenging year for production due to the closure of the Minto mine and the two-week closure of Victoria Gold’s Eagle Gold mine due to wildfires in the Mayo region; however, strong precious and base-metal prices throughout the year, increased production at Eagle Gold mine, and the re-opening of the Keno Hill mine suggests that 2023 production revenue will remain strong. There were 82 active exploration projects in the territory in 2023 (Fig. 3, Appendix 1),…

Publisher

Government of Yukon

Resources

3

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-08-26