Artemis Gold Inc. announced that as a result of internal engineering analysis, it has committed to additional investments as part of its Phase 1 development of the Blackwater Mine ("Blackwater") in order to facilitate the potential fast-tracking of the Phase 2 expansion. In support of these additional investments, the Company has amended the gold stream agreement with Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. ("Wheaton") which will provide an additional US$40 million (C$54million) in funding at a very low cost of capital.

The additional investments during Phase 1 include additional structural steel and increased conveyor belt widths in the crushing circuits, as well as the introduction of variable-speed-drives to the ball mill. Electrical components have also been upgraded to facilitate the Phase 2 requirements and to include optionality in relation to the use of redundancy back-up power sources. Other optimizations include upsizing of the oxygen plant coupled with down-shaft-sparging of oxygen to the pre-leach and carbon-in-leach ("CIL") trains, along with the optimization of the CIL layout in order to facilitate non-intrusive expansion to Phase 2, as well as full conversion of the detoxification process to remove the need for tanker-supplied liquid sulphur dioxide.