Belo Sun Mining (TSX-V:BSX, StockForum), a Toronto-based mineral exploration firm with a portfolio of properties in Brazil, wrapped up a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) of the company's proposed stage development approach for its wholly-owned Volta Grande gold project located in Para State, Brazil.
According to the news release, the PEA puts forward the notion of building a 3.0 million tonne per year processing facility for the first seven years of production with the facility expanding to a nominal 6.0 million tonne per year starting in Year 9 to the end of mine life.
The company will stockpile lower grade material in the first years of the mine's life in order to create a timely payback period while maintaining an average annual throughput of 147,900 ounces of recovered gold for the first seven years, climbing to 167,309 annual recovered gold ounces until the end of mine life.
Based on presently available metallurgical data, average gold recovery is expected to hit 92.8% for the life of mine with the diluted life of mine mill feed grade hitting an average 1.14 g/t gold with an average cut-off of 0.48 g/t gold.
Total capital costs for Volta Grande gold project are expected to reach US$328.7 million with an after-tax base case Net Present Value (“NPV”) of US$418.0 million at a 5% discount rate, 16.1% Internal Rate of Return (“IRR”) and a payback period of 4.2 years.
Belo Sun Mining president and CEO, Mark Eaton, commented, “Belo Sun has completed this study of a staged development approach in order to respond to the current financial environment for large capital gold projects and mitigate against some of the start-up risks of large tonnage projects.”
Then concluded, “With the positive results of this PEA we anticipate using a staged development approach for the execution of the project.”
Belo Sun Mining was in the news recently when the company got the green light in Brazil at the beginning of December.
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