Central Asia Resources (ASX: CVR) has increased the gold JORC Indicated and Inferred Resources by 28% to 124,000 ounces at the company’s 90% owned Dalabai gold project in Kazakhstan.
The upgrade has boosted Central Asia's gold JORC Resource total to 1.285 million ounces, and is well timed considering the company is targeting production from the Dalabai mine before the end of 2011.
Importantly, construction of the Dalabai mine remains on schedule, with the company forecasting the mine to produce annually 20,000 gold ounces and 140,000 silver ounces for 2.5 years.
Financial estimates for the mine have cash costs at US$545 per gold ounce, with a US$10.7 million capex and net cash flow undiscounted at US$37.7 million, providing very handy margins for Central Asia.
The potential production outcome of the Dalabai mine for Central Asia is that the short term cash flows can then be used to advance the company's other four projects in the country.
At the 95% owned Altyntas project, Central Asia is preparing for development in 2012, which already has a 598,000 gold Resource, with a production estimate of 65,000 gold ounces annually for seven years from potential heap leach and/ or CIL processing.
The target resource for Altyntas is 1 million to 1.2 million gold ounces, as the resource remains open at depth.
At the 95% owned Kepken project, the company has already identified the potential feed for Altyntas heap leach, with the project also holding a substantial gold resource of 438,000 gold ounces.
Another project, Kengir (95% owned), has 125,000 gold ounces and is less than 50 kilometres from Altyntas, with the least developed project the greenfield Bizhe (90% owned), located nearby and provides the possibility of feed for Dalabai heap leach processing.
The project areas are all strategically located close to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan and have adequate road, rail and telecommunication infrastructure.