With the rainy season starting to show signs of ending, Element79 Gold (CSE:ELEM) in late April is aiming to complete community negotiations that include a long-term surface rights access permit at the Minas Lucero Project.
As part of its commitment to responsible mining and sustainable development, Element79 Gold’s local team has been actively engaging with community leaders and stakeholders in Chachas and surrounding annexes at the project, which is located in the Arequipa region of Peru.
Speaking to Mining.com.au in a wide-ranging interview, CEO James C Tworek says “road cleanup and infrastructure rehabilitation is the first step after the rainy season”.
Strengthening community relations in Chachas is a major catalyst to restarting any development and exploration/drilling efforts on site at Lucero.
“Upon obtaining our long-term surface rights, our plan is to drill the four piles of tailings, totaling 1.3MMT of volume above-surface,” the CEO tells this news service.
“This will prove up the estimated 50,000 ounces of recoverable product sitting in these piles; their metallurgy; form a 43-101 on the tailings piles as well as a PEA, and then source development capital to build a mill on site to reprocess the tailings for revenue as well as become a local toll mill for our own extracted product as well as that from local artisanal producers.”
Current permits allow Element79 Gold to drill underground so long as it is accretive to ore extraction. Tworek says current plans for 2025 drilling include up to 1,000m of underground drilling (at about US$130 per metre) to prove up vein definition and enhance volumes of past production.
Further surface-level drilling of the 67 additional “untouched” veins is also planned, but requires a surface-level drill permit, expected to take four to six months, “which we would start upon obtaining our surface rights permit with the community”.
Looking ahead, Tworek flags Element79 Gold will be looking at growth through further acquisitions and is actively looking at other in-country near-term production opportunities that complement its business plan and team’s skill set.
Additionally, a “most likely” 2026 event includes potentially raising capital, which he notes “is a cornerstone of the CEO’s role” to always assess such options.
“Several initiatives for capitalisation of our business plan are underway,” he adds.
Formerly operated as the Shila mine from 1989 to 2005, Lucero consists of 10,805 hectares located in the Chila mountain range of southern Peru, which contains several historic high-grade gold-silver mines that were operated from the late 1980s to 2005 with small-scale artisanal mining ongoing since 2005.
Lucero consistently delivered high-grades during its past years of commercial operations, and between 1998 and 2005 reported annual production averaging approximately 20,000 ounces of gold and 435,000 ounces of silver per year at grades of 14.7g/t gold and 450g/t silver, with recoveries at the ore processing facility averaging 94.5% for gold and 85.5% for silver.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Element79 Gold
