The preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Cariboo gold project, in the historic Wells-Barkerville mining camp of British Columbia, provides a solid base-case for the project, which boasts low capital costs and “superb” production expansion potential.

Early this week, Barkerville published a PEA for the 185 000 oz/y Cariboo project, which put forward a net present value of C$402-million, an aftertax internal rate of return of 28% and capital expenditure of C$306-million.

The PEA is based on only 50% of the current mineral resource estimate of Cariboo, president and CEO Chris Lodder pointed out in a statement.

“This is a very strong start to a project that is growing as new resources are being delineated by our ongoing successful exploration at depth and on strike of the present resources and throughout the 2 000 km² prospective land package.”

The PEA envisions mining up to 4 000 t/d using a long-hole mining approach, focused on extracting large panels with minimum widths of 3.7 m and minimum height of 30 m. The project should produce a high-quality concentrate averaging 20.5 g/t gold at the mine site and continued use of the upgraded Quesnel River mill for final processing.

This, along with optimisation of the mining method, allowed Barkerville to include lower grade resources in the mine plan.

Barkerville’s vision of building a long life, high economic margin, low environmental impact mine in one of Canada's great historic mining camps will now enter the permitting and advanced engineering stage.

This PEA foresees a project that will have a significant economic impact and minimal environmental impact for the Cariboo region of British Columbia, with the potential of generating over C$3.39-billion of gross revenue and contributing about 320 permanent jobs during the production phase, and an additional 120 during the construction phase.