Belvedere Resources (CVE:BEL) has released the results of a positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on its wholly-owned Kopsa gold-copper project in Finland.
The PEA’s base case model outlines a pre-tax and pre-finance net present value of US$38.6mln at a discount rate of 8%, with an internal rate of return of 47.6%.
The PEA assumes a gold price of US$1,200 an ounce, a copper price of US$6,000 per tonne and a silver price of US$20 per ounce.
The life of mine (LoM) has been set at nine years with a peak production rate of 1.2mln tonnes per annum. LoM capital costs have been set at US$48.3mln and LoM operation costs at US$700 per ounce of gold equivalent.
The annual average production is seen weighing in at 27,000 ounces of gold and 1,050 tonnes of copper at an average operating cost of US$645 per troy ounce gold equivalent over the first six years.
The LoM production is envisaged to be 196,000 ounces of gold and 8,200 tonnes of copper at a mined grade of 0.91 grams per tonne gold and 0.15% copper.
It is currently envisaged that Kopsa will be mined by conventional open pit methods using an excavator-truck configuration with the output processed at Belvedere’s Hitura facilities, located some 19 kilometres via sealed road from the deposit.
The project has an extremely low life of mine stripping ratio of 0.63 tonnes of waste to one tonne of run of mine material, Belvedere said.
The Hitura mill until recently processed nickel sulphide ore at a nominal annual throughput rate of 600,000 tonnes per annum. Belvedere suspended nickel production from the Hitura mine in Finland in June due to the slump in the price of the metal.
In order to treat Kopsa ore, the flotation circuit would be configured to produce two sulphide concentrates: a marketable copper sulphide concentrate, containing some gold and silver, and a bulk sulphide concentrate. The bulk sulphide concentrate would be cyanide leached for the recovery of gold and silver followed by a conventional carbon-in-pulp (CIP) / carbon-in-leach (CIL) recovery, producing a smelted gold/silver doré onsite, Belvedere revealed.
More to follow …
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