Torex strikes deal with local group blocking access to El Limon-Guajes mine

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian gold producer Torex Gold has reached an agreement with local families blocking access to the El Limon-Guajes (ELG) mine, in Mexico, for more than a week, saying operations will be restarted during the night shift on Thursday.

Less than a week after declaring commercial production, Torex was forced last week Monday to temporarily suspend operations at the ELG operation, located in the Guerrero Gold Belt, south-west of Mexico City, reporting that an illegal blockade was started by three families demanding payments for alleged environmental damages.

"The transition from the high levels of activity during construction to the lower levels required during operations, is challenging for all stakeholders. One of the more difficult challenges is re-setting expectations as to what the company can and cannot do to improve the lives of community members that do not have an employment or contractual relationship with the company.

“This 're-setting of expectations' is not completed yet, but a process has been established to move toward that understanding,” explained Torex president and CEO Fred Stanford.

He added that the federal government's royalty tax regime would figure prominently in ongoing discussions, since it was specifically designed to channel funds generated by mining back into infrastructure projects within mining-associated communities.

Torex advised that, during the downtime at the mine, it completed several maintenance, fine tuning, and commissioning activities. These included the replacement of the semiautogenous grinding mill liners, chute adjustments, piping improvements, filter cloth replacement and the final commissioning of the RopeCon.

Further, resettlement activities at the new village of Real del Limon were completed with all of the families now moved into their new homes.