Condor Gold announced it had made significant progress in de-risking its open pit, associated mine infrastructure and planned operation plant at La India project in Nicaragua.
RESOURCES
The company said it had 1.12 million ounces of gold open pit mineral resources, including 8,583 thousands of tonnes (Kt) at 3.3g/t of gold for 903,000 oz gold in the indicated category.
Inferred resources are 1,901Kt at 3.6g/t gold for 220,000 oz gold permitted for extraction inclusive of a mineral reserve of 6.9 million tonnes at 3.0g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold.
SITE PREPARATIONS
The company has acquired 85% of the land within the permitted La India open pit mine site infrastructure, including key areas of the location of the processing plant, tailings storage facility, open pit, waste dump area, and explosive magazine.
Tierra Group Inc has completed 40% of the engineering designs for the tailings storage facility and two water retention ponds.
SRK Consulting (UK) Ltd is designing the site wide water balance including a surface water management plan.
Preliminary designs for the layout of the mine site infrastructure and for the location of the processing plant, which will have a capacity of up to 2,800 tonnes per day, are complete.
Mine and waste dump schedules for a number of mining scenarios are also complete.
Power studies have also progressed and the company has held several meetings with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Energy and Mines.
PROCESSING PLANT
Condor chairman and chief executive officer Mark Child said that the company had made excellent progress and significantly de-risked the project.
“It remains our intention to buy the remainder of the land this year and commence site preparation, while significantly advancing the engineering studies and placing a deposit on a processing plant.”
The company said at the end of July that it hoped to be “shovel ready” by the end of this year.