Dual-listed Condor Gold recorded considerable progress towards advancing its La India project, in Nicaragua, towards a construction decision, chairperson and CEO Mark Child said on Friday.

He said that the company’s focus during the first six months of the year had been two-fold – fulfilling conditions of an environmental permit for the development and exploitation of gold from La India and securing environmental permits to extract gold from two high-grade feeder pits.

The La India openpit is estimated to produce between 80 000 oz/y and 100 000 oz/y of gold, or a total of 600 000 oz over a six- to seven-year period.

Following the permitting of the two high-grade feeder pits in May, which in aggregate have about 232 000 oz gold at 5.5 g/t gold, Condor has 1.12-million ounces of gold openpit mineral resources permitted for extraction.

Earlier this week, Condor made further progress derisking the project by announcing that it had acquired 85% of the land within the permitted mine site infrastructure, including the key areas of the location of the processing plant, tailings storage facility (TSF), openpit, waste dump area and explosive magazine.

The company also reported that engineering studies were well advanced.

With regard to the TSF and two water retention ponds, which are being designed by Tierra Group, 40% of the engineering designs are completed.

The design of the site wide water balance, including a surface water management plan, is under way and has been awarded to SRK Consulting.

Preliminary designs for the layout of the mine site infrastructure, including, in some detail, the designs for the location of the processing plant, have been completed.

Mine and waste dump schedules for a number of mining scenarios have been completed.

The power studies have been progressed and several meetings held with the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

“The objective remains to commence site preparation and place a deposit on a processing plant by the end of 2020,” Child said.