G Mining wins Brazil court approval

G Mining Ventures (TSX: GMIN; US-OTC: GMINF) has scored a legal victory in Brazil that grants it permission to advance the Gurupi gold project.

A federal agrarian court in Maranhão, northeastern Brazil, ruled in the company’s favour on the project’s environmental licensing process, the Canadian gold miner said on Wednesday. The court annulled the legacy licences issued to a prior operator in 2011 and confirmed G Mining’s ability to initiate a new licensing process.

The ruling, which resolves a civil action that has been open since 2013, provides “a clean regulatory path forward and positions Gurupi for long-term development and strategic growth,” G Mining said in a news release.

The project hosts 43.5 million indicated tonnes grading 1.31 grams gold per tonne for 1.83 million oz. contained metal, and 18.5 million inferred tonnes at 1.29 grams for 770,000 oz. within the Blanket, Contact and Chega Tudo deposits, according to a February resource update. 

Shares of G Mining Ventures rose 2% by mid-Wednesday in Toronto, giving the company a market capitalization of just over $4 billion (US$2.94 billion).

Pipeline

G Mining considers the Gurupi project to be a long-term development. It’s third in the company’s pipeline after the Tocantinzinho mine, also in Brazil, and the Oko West project in Guyana, which is nearing a construction decision.

An initial exploration budgeted of US$2 million to US$4 million has been designated for the project this year. However, a larger budget would be allocated upon receipt of the necessary exploration permits in the second half of 2025, the company said.

G Mining CEO Louis-Pierre Gignac called the court ruling “a pivotal moment” for Gurupi by removing a longstanding regulatory constraint in its permitting process while highlighting the company’s track record in “navigating complex regulatory environments.

“With this legal certainty, we are now well positioned to unlock the full potential of this district-scale asset through focused exploration and meaningful stakeholder engagement,” Gignac said in the release.

The environmental process would require the submission of a full environmental impact assessment and report and prior consent from the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform for areas overlapping agrarian settlements, the company noted.

District-scale

The property covering about 1,900 sq. km has a long history of exploration that began in the 1980s when Vale and other operators identified multiple gold occurrences along an 80-km mineralized trend. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, over 126,000 metres of drilling had been completed to define the key deposits.

Luna Gold, now part of Equinox Gold (TSX, NYSE-A: EQX), acquired the project in 2007, expanding drilling efforts and establishing a JORC-compliant (Australia rules) resource. Australia’s OZ Minerals took over the project in 2016 and conducted further exploration. A pre-feasibility study was completed in 2019, contemplating a high-margin open-pit gold operation.

G Mining acquired Gurupi in late 2024 from BHP (NYSE, LSE, ASX: BHP), which took over OZ Minerals in 2023, and released the NI 43-101 (Canadian rules) resource estimate.