CANDENTE'S CANARIACO PEA TO IDENTIFY MORE PROJECT GOALSCANDENTE COPPER
UPDATE ON THE AUSENCO 2021 PEA ON CANARIACO NORTE
Candente Copper Corp.'s 2021 preliminary economic assessment that is being conducted by Ausenco Engineering Inc. on the Canariaco Norte project is advancing well and is expected to identify more opportunities to improve the project than originally expected. These additional improvements have resulted in a slight delay to the completion by Ausenco to early Q1 2022.
Ausenco is leveraging conceptual work completed in the desktop study (see Candente news release from June 15, 2021) to help maximize shareholder value through a project concept that is expected to be financeable and executable in the current market environment.
The Ausenco 2021 PEA is expected to:
- Improve environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices;
- Reduce initial capital expenditures (capex);
- Highlight a smaller initial throughput for a lower initial capex;
- Expand throughput after payback using mine cash flow to double capacity with the addition of a second mill line;
- Improve infrastructure design including a single dry waste storage facility with co-disposal of waste rock and filtered mill tailings.
"While the work will take a few more weeks to complete than initially anticipated, we are very excited to be able to demonstrate optimizations that are expected to result in a substantially improved proposed mining project at Canariaco Norte," says Joanne Freeze, president and chief executive officer. "The Ausenco 2021 PEA will not only show a smaller higher-grade starter project with a lower initial capex and accelerated payback period, but will also show other opportunities to lower capex and opex (operating expenditures) and implement better ESG practices."