"This is really great news," says Nick Appleyard, TriStar's President and CEO, "we can now move forward with converting the major central part of our project area to a mining concession. With studies already underway, we will soon have all of the necessary information for demonstrating to DNPM the economic and technical viability of Castelo de Sonhos."
The DNPM approval pertains to the mineral concession where most of the known gold lies at Castelo de Sonhos. Drilling has established that gold mineralization continues onto four neighbouring concessions, all of which are held by TriStar's 100%-owned Brazilian subsidiary, Mineração Castelo dos Sonhos Ltda.
The DNPM approval follows their acceptance of TriStar's proposal for new legal boundaries for the concession that will delimit the area where resources are known to lie. This proposal removes the eastern third of the original mineral concession, and retains all of the area on the Castelo de Sonhos plateau where gold mineralization has been identified.
Under the regulatory and permitting system administered by DNPM in Brazil, once a concession's Final Exploration Report has been approved, the holder has one year to submit the Plano de Aproveitamento Economico (Economic Exploitation Plan). Once this has been reviewed and approved, an environmental impact study is required to convert an exploration concession to a mining concession and to obtain an operational permit. When these milestones have been achieved, groups of contiguous concessions can be consolidated into a single operating mine.
