Certej study predicts 11-year mine life

A feasibility study for European Goldfields’ (EGU-T, EGU-L) Certej gold-silver project in Romania says an open-pit mining operation could produce an average of 156,000 oz. gold and 814,000 oz. silver per year over 11 years.

The next thing European Goldfields needs is an environmental permit, which it expects to receive in the fourth quarter, and an updated mining permit. The project holds a mining permit from previous operations that saw a state-owned company mine on a small-scale basis up until 2006.

Once the permits are in hand, the company will move toward raising enough money to finance the 80%-owned project — the study assumed a debt to equity ratio of 50:50.

Capital costs are estimated at an initial US$214.7 million, plus about US$49.1 million in sustaining capital.

Operating costs would be about US$353 per oz. and the project’s post-tax internal rate of return (IRR) is about 20%. The IRR includes a 2% royalty on gross revenues.

A gold price of US$650 per oz. and a silver price of US$12 per oz. were used.

The study looked at mining 3 million tonnes a year at a strip ratio of 3:1. Ore would be processed first via a flotation circuit to produce a pyrite, goldsilver concentrate which would then be sent through for further grinding and ambient pressure leaching using Xstrata’s (XSRAF-O, XTA-L) Albion process to extract the gold and silver (the Albion process includes ultra-fine grinding and oxidative leaching at atmospheric pressure).

Then a standard carbon-in-leach circuit would process the oxidized concentrate into gold and silver dor on site.

Certej is an epithermal goldsilver deposit located in western Romania. Certej reserves, which are included in the resources, total 32.8 million tonnes of ore grading 2 grams gold per tonne and 11.4 grams silver, using a cutoff grade of 0.8 gram gold per tonne.

European Goldfields is looking into other cost-saving methods that weren’t examined in the feasibility study, including using second- hand grinding mills and using some of the waste rock for a district highway project. The company is also considering expanding the project life to 15 years by processing existing dump material and lower-grade ore in the pit that is economic at a gold price of more than US$700 per oz.

The company also holds the Stratoni polymetallic operation, the Olympias gold-zinc-lead-silver project and the Skouries copper-gold porphyry project in Greece.