Lumina Gold Corp (TSX-V:LUM, OTCQB:LMGDF) aims to complete a feasibility study for its Cangrejos gold-copper project in Ecuador by the second quarter of 2025, a key step in bringing the project into production.
CEO Marshall Koval joined Proactive to provide an update on the progress made on the feasibility study as well as the company’s other efforts to advance the project.
Proactive: You’ve provided an update on the Cangrejos project feasibility study. Can you remind us about that project and the work that’s gone into it?
Marshall Koval: The Cangrejos project has about 11.6 million ounces of gold in the reserve that we put out into the pre-feasibility study in 2023 and 1.4 billion pounds of copper. We’re doing the feasibility study now. It’s scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2025. We’re well advanced with all the fieldwork. We’re into the engineering phase now.
We’re looking at optimizing the pre-feasibility study we completed and we’re looking at improving the throughput to get better economics. Instead of starting at 30,000 tons per day, we’re going for 40,000 tons per day. That’ll bring some higher grade forward. In the mine plan, we’re optimizing the project layout. So, we’re pretty excited about where we’re headed.
What are the most important things that you have to get done?
We’re just in the process of locking down the complete facility layout. In support of that for final engineering and costing, we have to do a geotechnical sitting program in the field, which is some test pits, geophysics and drilling. This is around the waste storage, the tailings and the plant storage area.
That’s started now so we have that and in parallel with the feasibility study, we’re getting ready to kick off the environmental and social impact assessment. We’ll be in the field probably next month on that work and that will take six months of field work. Then all the mitigation measures, the impact assessments will be done. That’s part of permitting, which we think will take about 18 months at this stage to get the environmental license.
When you put together a feasibility study, due diligence is so important here to get to that next stage.
There are three critical things we need to do to get the operating permit to put the project into construction. One is to complete the feasibility study. Number two is to get the environmental impact and environmental social impact assessments complete. And number three is finalizing the investment protection agreements with the government that set the royalty rates, import duties, tax rates and so on. We’re doing those three things in parallel right now and shooting for the end of 2025 to have most of that in place.
Quotes have been edited for clarity and style