PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner PanTerra Gold on Friday told shareholders that it was reviewing a number of acquisition or merger opportunities, and was currently contemplating five specific mine developments, as its Las Lagunas mine continued to deliver below expectations.

An earlier review process had revealed that Las Lagunas, in the Dominican Republic, would not be able to achieve the gold and silver recoveries originally expected from the project, as the Albion/carbon-in-leach process technology was only treating old mine tailings, rather than clean concentrate produced from mining operations.

The miner noted that the tailings were variable in size, viscosity, sulphur levels and grades.

However, despite the lowered expectations, Las Lagunas was expected to generate earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of about $29-million a year, at current gold prices, over the next five years until 2019.

In the meantime, PanTerra will focus on a mine development that could provide refractory concentrate to the Las Lagunas processing facility.

PanTerra said on Friday that the commercial benefits of importing concentrate to Las Lagunas included the written-down plant value, existing environmental permits, trained staff, 15 years of tailing dam capacity and an on-site limestone quarry.

These benefits were expected to more than offset the cost of concentrate transport from a mine site within the region.

The company has formally applied to the Dominican Republic to permit the import of refractory concentrate and to use the government’s tailings dam at Las Lagunas to store processed concentrate, which would permit the existing operations to be extended from 5 years to 20 years.

Meanwhile, PanTerra reported on Friday that gold production during the quarter ended September reached 7 950 oz, which was on par with production in the June quarter, while silver production reached 56 500 oz, below the 63 900 oz delivered in the previous quarter.

For the December quarter, the Las Lagunas operation was expected to deliver 10 300 oz of gold and 64 100 oz of silver.