Eldorado Gold, together with its subsidiary Hellas Gold, has closed its previously announced €680m project financing facility for the development of the Skouries project in northern Greece.
Last year, the Canadian gold mining company secured approval to restart the Skouries gold-copper porphyry project after formalising the project financing facility.
According to the company’s feasibility study, the development of the Skouries project is estimated to require a capital cost of $845m.
The currently closed project financing is structured in a way to cover 80% of the project’s funding requirement towards completion, while the company would fund the remaining 20%.
Hellas contributed €31.2m, to support the early works activities at Skouries, which the company considers as a credit towards its equity commitment, as per the terms of the financing facility.
Eldorado’s equity commitment for the project is backed by a letter of credit worth €190m, issued under the company’s revolving credit facility.
The letter of credit will be reduced as per its further investment in the project, said the company.
Eldorado is a gold and base metals producer that owns mining, development and exploration operations located in Turkiye, Canada, Greece, and Romania.
The company acquired the Skouries project from European Goldfields in 2012
Skouries is a high-grade gold-copper porphyry deposit, part of the Kassandra Mines Complex, located within the Halkidiki Peninsula of Northern Greece.
The deposit is planned to be mined using a combination of conventional open pit and underground mining techniques.
It is expected to produce an aggregate of 140,000oz of gold and 67 million pounds of copper per annum, for a total mine life of around 20 years.
The project is expected to pay back the costs within less than four years and generate an average of about $215m per annum in the first five years.
Earlier this year, Fluor received an engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) contract from Hellas Gold for the Skouries project.
