Comparisons30 Apr 2020 14:25
Looking at Solg discovery the amounts are huge see (Sharecast News) - SolGold updated the market on expressions of interest it had received from leading commodity traders for the offtake of copper-gold-silver concentrate from its flagship Alpala project in Ecuador on Thursday.
The AIM-traded firm said that, following the release of "encouraging" metallurgical test work results in October, it began engaging with "major" global copper smelters and international commodity traders, in a bid to assess the interest and commercial value of Alpala's high copper, high precious metal and low deleterious content copper concentrate.
It said on Thursday that, subject to favourable outcomes in development funding and necessary permits, production of gold rich copper concentrate is expected to start in late 2025, as it outlined in the preliminary economic assessment in November.
In the first 15 years of production, based on the 50Mtpa fast ramp-up scenario, the mine was expected to produce an average of 810ktpa of concentrate, with grades of 28.2% copper, 22.1g/t gold and 65.7g/t silver.
Those grades would result in production of contained metals of around 230kt of copper in concentrate, 580koz of gold and 1.7Moz of silver per annum on average.
At spot metal prices, life-of-mine net smelter return sales proceeds were expected to be $58.4bn, under the preliminary economic assessment assumption.