In farming speak, most gold mining projects need 3 inches of rain to get their ground ready for planting. Caiamar and Sertão need only an afternoon shower to get into full production.
Caiamar is a $4 million capex and its underground mine is already built. Yamana operated it for only one year in 2015 at grades of up to 3.2 g/t. It has at least 20 years of mine life and needs some u/g re-cabling and a small fleet to produce 1000+ ounces a month later this year. Marcelo Lima has just about finished dewatering the lowest level of the mine and so we are ready to start.
Sertão is also a $4-5 million capex. The current Stage 5 pit will be used as the entrance and the high grade is sitting just a few metres vertically below. If we can achieve 45,000 ounces in 2023 from Sertão at an average grade of 16 g/t then the payback on this project will be less than 3 months. As GOLDINVEST.de said - Sertão could be our company maker.
As we get ready to reopen both Caiamar and Sertão, our Head mine planner Juliana Cotrim has been busy working on both mine plans. Her Caiamar model is complete and we are looking forward to seeing Juliana's ideas at Sertão.
On Thursday, Paulo rang me and said that SRSD41, which we reported to you last month on the side of the pit wall with 3m @ 16.9 g/t, had a surprise mineralisation 40 metres further down at extremely high grades. Paulo will be going to the core shed on Tuesday to have another look. He said this might be "corpos empilhados" or "stacked lode" and was a feature at his old mine Mina Nova up the road at Crixás. Drilling at Sertão has never tested the theory that another reef sits below the current reefs.
I am quietly confident that Sertão will become the highest grading gold mine in the industry again in 2023 after its incredible success with Troy Resources in the early 2000's. To me, Sertão is like the Phar Lap of horse racing, Jordan of basketball, Bradman of cricket, Ablett Snr of Aussie rules, Nicklaus of golf, Gretzky of ice hockey, Campese of rugby, Lewis of athletics and Ronaldinho of football rolled into one.
As mentioned last week, we are raising C$5 million at C$1 per share with a full warrant of C$1.50 to help accelerate mine development at Caiamar and Sertão. The balance of the capex needs will be paid out of cash flow and I am quietly confident that Israel Oliveira and the team will continue their strong performance at the PDGM operations after a really good June. See the link below to subscribe.
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