SKOPJE (Macedonia), August 16 (SeeNews) – Canada’s Euromax Resources expects to launch in 2015 the construction of a mine at its Ilovitza copper-gold deposit site in Macedonia, in which, according to its preliminary economic assessment, it will invest $500 million (376 million euro), the company's CEO Steve Sharpe said.
Production at Euromax’s 100%-controlled Ilovitza site, in the south of the country, is expected to start in 2017, Sharpe told SeeNews in a recent interview via email.
Euromax signed a 30-year concession deal for copper and gold exploitation at Ilovitza in July 2012. Under the contract, it will pay royalties of 2.0% of the market value of metal contained in concentrate and a land usage fee of 180,000 denars per square kilometre.
"I believe the majority of capital required - approximately $300 million of the $500 million capex - to build this project can be bank financed," Sharpe said.
The company is already negotiating with potential lenders to ensure that the work is fully in line with the Equator Principles and IFC guidelines, which is a framework designed to proactively manage and mitigate against environmental and social risks to ensure project finance.
The results of Euromax’s infill drilling campaign at Ilovitza, which was completed in 2012, defined 2.1 million ounces of gold and 875 million pounds (Mlb) of copper measured and indicated, as well as 83 thousand ounces (Koz) of gold and 36 Mlb copper in the inferred category. The infill drill programme was for 12,000m to achieve 100m spacing through the mineralized zone.
Euromax also completed a smaller step-out programme earlier this year, the results of which successfully constrained mineralization to the north and the west.
"Drilling programmes have helped us prove continuity of the deposit, geological structure and nature of the orebody and also indicate that there are some higher-grade zones near the surface,” Sharpe said. The deposit is to be exploited using open pit methods and these higher-grade zones might be accessed in the early years, he added.
In the coming months Euromax will be announcing a pre-feasibility study, aimed to provide a more refined indication of the engineering, mining and economics for the project.
"To enable this, we are continuing with a programme of work comprising geotechnical drilling to investigate pit slope stability; optimisation of the mine plan; metallurgical test work; hydrogeological work; development of the mine layout; and optimization of concentrate grade," Sharpe said.
Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, Euromax has gold and base metal projects in Bulgaria and Serbia.
(1 euro = 61.4865 Macedonian denars)