Los Andes Copper Ltd (TSX-V:LA) has announced the appointment of Santiago Montt as its chief operating officer (COO) and as president of Compañía Minera Vizcachitas Holding (CMVH), the company's operating subsidiary in Chile.
The company noted that Montt recently spent over a decade overseeing BHP's corporate and legal affairs in the Americas, serving in different roles in Chile, Brazil, and Australia. He is a lawyer with vast experience leading teams in multinational mining companies and will be based in Chile.
It said the arrival of Montt strengthens the company for the coming phases of the Vizcachitas Project leading to permitting and construction, nothing that he is passionate for the development of a successful and responsible business and will drive the company's mission to maximize the value of the Vizcachitas Project for all its stakeholders.
In a statement, R. Michael Jones, CEO of Los Andes commented: "The team at Los Andes is very honoured to have Mr Montt, a senior, global mining executive, join us. As CEO I look forward to a highly collaborative environment in our Company since Santiago will be based in Chile and has a background in stakeholder engagement and law, and I am based in London and have an engineering and capital markets background. Together we will report to the Board with complimentary skills."
READ: Los Andes Copper reports encouraging assays from its Phase I drill program at the Vizcachitas copper project in Chile
As an inducement to Montt to join the company, Los Andes said 29,312 common shares will be issued to him, all of which will be placed in escrow pending the satisfaction of certain performance targets and time-release criteria during his first year of employment.
An additional 34,004 common shares will be issued to him and placed in escrow pending the satisfaction during his second year of employment of performance targets to be defined by the board and a time-release criteria, it added.
Los Andes Copper is an exploration and development company with an 100% interest in the Vizcachitas Project in Chile. The project is a copper-molybdenum porphyry deposit, located 120 kilometres north of Santiago, in an area of very good infrastructure.
The company's Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), delivered in June 2019, highlights that the project has a post-tax NPV of $1.8 billion and an IRR of 20.77%, based on a $3 per pound copper price. It also has a Measured Resources of 254.4 million tonnes having a grade of 0.439% copper and Indicated Resource of approximately 1.03 billion tonnes having a grade of 0.385% copper.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com