Name of the Project
Filo del Sol copper/gold/silver project.

Location
The project is located in the Andes Mountains on the border of Chile and Argentina.

Client
Filo Mining.

Project Description
A prefeasibility study (PFS) has confirmed the project’s “incredible” copper, gold and silver mining potential.

The project has proven and probable reserves of 259.1-million tonnes grading 0.39% copper, 0.33 g/t gold and 15.13 g/t silver.

The PFS proposes an openpit mine, with conventional drilling, blasting and loading performed on 12 m benches. The openpit will have a mine life of 14 years, including prestripping, with a life-of-mine strip ratio of 1.5:1. A maximum mining rate of about 65-million tonnes a year (including waste) is required to provide the nominal 60 000 t/d of ore to the process facility.

Ore will be trucked from the mine and either stockpiled or direct tipped into the primary crusher. The ore will be further crushed through a closed-circuit secondary crushing system to a stockpile.

Crushed ore will be processed at an on/off heap-leach pad where the copper will be leached in acid and then recovered from the leach solution by solvent extraction and electrowinning to produce LME-grade copper cathodes. Metal leaching is expected to span 13 years.

Once the copper is leached, the ore will be rinsed, neutralised and removed from the on/off leach pad by a bucket wheel reclaimer. The material will then be agglomerated using cement, and subsequently stacked on a permanent heap-leach pad where gold and silver will be leached in a cyanide solution. Gold and silver will be recovered from the pregnant gold leach solution by a Merrill-Crowe zinc precipitation process. Gold and silver will be smelted to produce doré.

A portion of the barren leach solution, following zinc precipitation, will be treated to avoid a build-up of recirculating copper and cyanide through the gold circuit. This treatment is based on the sulphidisation, acidification, recycling, and thickening process, which produces a copper sulphide precipitate (grading at about 65% copper) and recovers cyanide for use in the heap leach.

Average yearly production is estimated at 67 000 t of copper (including copper as copper precipitate), 159 000 oz of gold, and 8.65-million ounces of silver.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at an 8% discount rate, of $1.86-billion, and an internal rate of return of 27%, with a payback of 3.4 years from the start of processing.

Value
The project has a preproduction capital cost of $1.27-billion, excluding costs before a construction decision.

Duration
The project will take an estimated 24 months to complete.

Latest Developments
Potential opportunities to further improve the project include increasing metallurgical recoveries with additional testwork and optimisation of process parameters; delineating more or higher-grade material through continued exploration on the company’s extensive land package; and future exploitation of copper/gold sulphide material underlying the identified oxide deposit.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
Ausenco Engineering Canada, with input from AGP Mining Consultants (Canada), BGC Engineering (Canada), Knight Piésold (Canada), Advantage Geoservices Limited, Merlin Geosciences Inc., and SRK Consulting (Canada) (PFS).

On Budget and on Time?
Too early to state.

Contact Details for Project Information
Filo Mining, tel +1604 689 7842 or email info@filo-mining.com.