JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed gold miner PanTerra Gold on Monday announced executive changes to its team that would help it deliver on its business plan and optimise the Las Lagunas operation, in the Dominican Republic. 

The company announced that Zach Casley, who was appointed CEO in September, would step down at the end of February to pursue other activities. COO Adrian McDonald and chairperson Brian Johnson would absorb the CEO responsibilities.

The senior management team put in place to advance PanTerra’s plan of sourcing additional refractory concentrates and securing standalone refractory mining projects, include Johnson as chairperson, McDonald as COO, Deon Young as metallurgy manager, James McTiernan as Las Lagunas process plant manager, Christof Bernardy as Las Lagunas surface operations manager and James Tyers as development director.

Johnson, whose service agreement has been extended by three years to December 21, 2016, would focus on administration, business development and the resolution of substantial potential claims on design engineers and suppliers of equipment provided to the Las Lagunas project, which was not fit for purpose.

Hydrometallurgist McDonald is responsible for the company’s Las Lagunas operations and would be involved in the evaluation and ultimate operation of new projects.

“Large numbers of refractory gold and silver deposits known to exist world-wide are unable to be developed for a variety of reasons, including environmental, permitting and infrastructure issues. Many of these deposits, including several being investigated by the company, are known to be able to produce concentrate with grades of 40 g/t to 50 g/t of gold or more, and capable of being transported economically in shipping containers to permitted processing locations,” PanTerra stated.

PanTerra’s plan is to firstly extend the life of its Las Lagunas operations by importing refractory concentrate from one or more sources, and secondly to exploit standalone refractory deposits, with an initial focus on mining opportunities identified in North and South America.

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.

The focus would be on sourcing a clean concentrate derived from mining operations that would, to a large extent, avoid problems encountered with the Las Lagunas tailings, with variability of particle size, density, viscosity and sulphide feed levels, and which only concentrate to a grade of around 10 g/t of gold. The company said that an equal blend of 50 g/t of gold imported concentrate and Las Lagunas concentrate could lead to a trebling of production and substantially lowering processing costs.