Of the 50 families living near Anatolia Minerals‘ (ANO-T) Copler gold-silver heap leach project in Turkey, the company is close to have having resettlement agreements with all but one family.
Edward Dowling, president and CEO of Anatolia, says the company is now acting to expropriate the lone family but he still hopes the company will be able to strike a deal with them.
“We suspect as they get notice of the expropriation process that they’ll come to the table and negotiate in good faith,” Dowling says.
Nobody lives on the properties in question. Dowling describes it as grazing land with rocky, rolling hills and a few trees.
“What they are asking is a very high price and we can’t agree to that because once we are done all of this we’ll normalize everybody to the best deal so we can’t pay one person extraordinarily higher than others,” Dowling says.
There are three other agreements that are still unsettled but Dowling says the company is just going through the required administrative processes.
In one case, a landowner was trying to get the Turkish government to reclassify land as residential because there was a shack located on it so he could receive more money.
“He’s run the process with the Turkish authorities and they said no,” Dowling says. “He’s back negotiating with us and we expect to get that resolved soon.”
In another case, the landowner is a disabled person who is technically a ward of the court.
“The court has to agree that it’s a fair price so it’s just working through the admin process,” Dowling says.
Two others claimed they held title to some land. A lower court ruled in their favour but Anatolia took the case to a higher court. One of the landowners settled with Anatolia out of court and now Dowling expects the second person to follow.
About 250 people in total are being relocated and Dowling says that in general they are happy with the new village and the compensation they will be receiving.
Properties range from a 300 sq. metre stone home with a little land and to a property amounting to a few hectares.
Dowling says that construction is going well. The crew has been stripping ore, using some of the material for fill and compaction work for the heap leach pads.
“And of course we don’t want to waste so ore is begin stockpiled and it’ll be about a couple hundred thousand tonnes,” Dowling says.
The company has finished the excavation for the primary crusher – which will break down 15,500 tonnes of ore each day – and will pour the foundation for that early next month.
Dowling expects the primary crusher will be complete by the third quarter.
The company aims to have its first gold pour in the fourth quarter of this year.
Anatolia expects to produce a total of 1.3 million oz. gold at an average cash cost of US$260 per oz. — an average of 175,000 oz. gold per year.
Proven and probable reserves stand at 40.8 million tonnes grading 1.65 grams gold epr tonne and 3.75 grams silver.
The company is also looking into eventually adding a 5,000-tonne per day mill to improve recovery from higher-grade ore.
The project is located 500 km east of Ankara in central Turkey.
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