Calibre Mining and its joint venture partner Rosita Mining have entered into a joint venture agreement (JV agreement) with Century Mining for the further development and advancement of the Rosita D project in Northeastern Nicaragua.
Image: A gold mineral. Photo: courtesy of carlos aguilar/Freeimages.com.
Pursuant to the JV Agreement, Calibre and Rosita Mining have agreed with Century that they will form a new Nicaraguan joint venture company, Santa Rita Mining, with Century ultimately holding 75% of the outstanding shares and Rosita Mining and Calibre holding 17.5% and 7.5% of the outstanding shares respectively.
Century will contribute a total of US$8.5 million to Santa Rita Mining in tranches of $1.5 million and $7.0 million which funds will be used for the construction, commissioning and operation of the processing facility to treat the Santa Rita stockpile resource on the Rosita D Project.
Calibre and Rosita Mining will transfer the Rosita D Concession as well as all technical know-how of the Project to Santa Rita Mining for their interest in the joint venture company.
Calibre will also receive a one-time payment of $50,000 for certain surface rights associated with the Project.
As previously announced via press release by Rosita Mining on October 11th, the Project has received the Environmental Permit to proceed with the processing plant. With funding concluded, further engineering, final land status work and other technical aspects of Project Development can proceed.
A Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Rosita D Project and the processing of the Santa Rita Stockpile Resource was completed by Rosita Mining in 2016.
The Preliminary Economic Assessment is preliminary in nature, and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.
The reporting of the investment by Century is not an indication that a production decision has been made by Calibre and the Company confirms that it has not made a production decision with respect to the Project.
The Company has not completed a feasibility study or established the economic viability of the Project or proposed operations on the Project, and no mineral reserves have been established for the Project that would support a production decision.
Projects which are put into production without first establishing mineral reserves and completing a feasibility study have historically had a higher risk of economic or technical failure.
The Rosita D Mineral Resource includes 70.9 million lbs. of copper and 96,660 oz. of gold and 46.2 million lbs. of copper and 50,330 oz. of gold in the Indicated and Inferred categories respectively.
Indicated resources total 6.46 million tonnes grading 0.47 grams gold per tonne and 0.5% copper per tonne whilst Inferred resources total 3.44 million tonnes grading 0.46 grams gold per tonne and 0.61% copper per tonne in a series of stockpiles located near the former producing Santa Rita gold-copper open pit mine.
These estimates have been based on a US$10 net smelter return (“NSR”) cut off. In addition, Inferred resources of 1.96 million tonnes grading 0.56 grams gold per tonne at cut-off of 0.3 g/t gold in tailings located proximal to the Santa Rita stockpiles.
Source: Company Press Release