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The Tagua Project has an area of 3,273 hectares / Courtesy of Cmara Minera de San Juan The Taguas project, located 25 km north of the Veladero mine, is operated by the Canadian company Orvana Minerals Corp. and has an initial useful life of up to 15 years, said Juan Gavidia, CEO of the mining company.
Orvana's assets in the world are an underground mine in Bolivia and in Asturias, Spain, is the central operation.
Clearly, the dimension of Taguas is not comparable to that of Veladero, so far. This gold and silver project is located in the Iglesia department in Argentina, at an altitude ranging from 3,600 to 4,000 meters above sea level.
It should be noted that last week the diamond drilling campaign ended, which required an investment of USD 3 million and, according to Ral lvarez Cifuentes, Orvana Minerals' Director of Explorations. In the next season they plan to quintuple the budget.
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“We are trying to carry out a heap leaching project for oxidized ore, with a scale of probably 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes / day. We are in the part of the Preliminary Economic Study, which we will follow with a Pre- feasibility that will take an additional year , and then a Feasibility that is another twelve months, ”explained Juan Gavidia , in the radio program“ Renewable Creation ”that is broadcast Saturdays on CNN Radio San Juan.
And, according to the executive, "the important thing is that the mineral resource is well understood and we are a little beyond an exploratory issue, but rather already in the development of a mining project."
The company's plans include having the Feasibility Study ready in 2023. The historical exploration operator of Taguas is Compaa Minera Piuquenes SA and the number of meters drilled until 2017 reached 52,000.
“In the last 25 to 30 years, investment in exploration has been around USD 25 million and in the last two and a half years, under Orvana's responsibility, around USD 5 million, ” said Juan Gavidia.
According to Gavidia, Taguas will have approximately a useful life of between 12 to 15 years "but another reality of mining is that one continues to explore in the deposit itself and life always lengthens."
Orvana Minerals has been indirectly operating the Taguas Project for more than 2 years and formally, as an asset transferred on paper, as of 2021.
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“ Taguas has always been part of the group that participates in Orvana, so it was an almost horizontal transaction. If you want to play around with the flexibility of the concept of ownership, for almost 30 years. In all that time, Taguas has not had the same understanding as to what could be. First it was thought that it was a deposit of veins to be worked with underground mining , after voluminous breaches worked in an open pit, also an open pit only on the oxidized part of the veins and, finally, the last look we gave it is make it a low grade open pit. Which has another type of view regarding the issue of how to quantify the resource and with what mining and metallurgical method to process.That is what has been achieved now, we are betting on a low grade oxide project, we mean 0.4 gr / ton, with a volume of 10,000 to 15,000 ton / day to be placed on heap leach heaps ", he explained Gavidia.
When you explore something new you don't understand it, when you take it to a project you already understand it and when you have finished planning it you can build it and then operate it ”, said Gavidia.
Source: San Juan Mining Chamber