Crusader eyeing gold production this year

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Brazil-focused gold developer Crusader Resources is targeting high-grade gold production from its Juruena project before the end of the year.

In a presentation to the Paydirt Latin America Downunder conference, in Perth, on Wednesday Crusader MD Paul Stephen indicated that mining and environmental permits for the Juruena project were due in the second quarter of this year, allowing for the start of construction and development soon after.

The project is estimated to host some 1.28-million tonnes of resource, grading 6.3 g/t gold for some 260 900 oz of gold, with the project’s preliminary economic assessment considering initial mining from two openpit operations at the Querosene and Dona Maria deposits, followed by underground mining.

Ore will be processed through a carbon-in-leach beneficiation plant to produce gold.

Meanwhile, work is also continuing at Crusader’s Borborema gold project, which was granted an environmental licence earlier this year.

While initial work at Borborema focused on the development of a 4.2-million-tonne-a-year operation, the bankable feasibility study was suspended in 2014 owing to falling gold prices.

Crusader has now revised the development plan for Borborema, downsizing the project to a proposed throughput rate of two-million tonnes a year.

Stephen said on Wednesday that feasibility work on Borborema would take between six and nine months to complete, including final engineering and costing work, as well as to lock in the final scale and scope of the mine.