Bellhaven Copper and Gold (BHV.V) has released an updated resource estimate for its 100% owned La Mina copper-gold project in Colombia. An improvement update is the fact the resource estimate is now based on an in-pit resource rather than an in situ resource, and in-pit ounces have a higher value.
The cut-off grade and pit definition were based on acceptable parameters such as $1275 gold and $2.75 copper, a mining cost of $1.72 per tonne and a processing cost of $5.83/t. Using a cut-off grade of 0.25 g/t gold, the project contains 1.01 million gold-equivalent ounces in the indicated category as well as in excess of 425,000 gold-equivalent ounces in the inferred category at an average gold-equivalent grade of respectively 1.12 g/t and 1.07 g/t.
Should you use a cutoff grade of 0.4 g/t, the average grade would increase by approximately 25% in the indicated category to 1.38 g/t, and still contain almost 860,000 gold-equivalent ounces (of which 580,000 ounces are ‘pure’ gold). The quality of the inferred resource category would also improve with an average grade of 1.32 g/t gold-equivalent, for a total of 351,000 gold-equivalent ounces.
There are plenty of ounces at La Mina, but the main question is how profitable these ounces will be. It’s indeed one of the higher-grade copper-gold porphyry systems in the Americas, but the jury is out on the economics.
Go to Bellhaven’s website
The author has no position in Bellhaven. Please read the disclaimer
