EL BAGRE COMPLEX
PROJECT: EL BAGRE COMPLEX
General
La Ye and Los Mangos are Operadora’s two producing mines, and Cordero are a nearby extension of the same type of operation. The first two are 1.4 km apart and share the same plant. Cordero is 2.6 km from Los Mangos and is, in effect, an extension of the existing two operations, and shares many of the characteristics of Los Mangos.
La Ye has been in production since 2010 and Los Mangos since 2013, and both have established infrastructure, mining methods, geotechnical aspects, and a history of production.
La Ye and Los Mangos currently produce 156,000 tpa of ore. Cordero will replace production from the existing operations as they wind down in 2020.
La Ye Mine
La Ye produced ~23,000 tonnes of ore in 2018. It uses a non-mechanized, hand held cut & fill method for near vertical veins, with 30 m to 60 m level spacing. Raises are developed on either side of a stope from which mining progresses. Fill is placed using the same raises as the stope progresses. Development is hand held with pneumatic rocker shovels. Tracked ore drives are used to transport ore to a series of declines along the orebody, from where the ore is hoisted out.
La Ye is currently producing at Level 5 (450m depth) and its development goes down to Level 8 (650m).
La Ye has a fully-equipped mine camp with capacity for 52 employees with water supplied by the company. The processing capacity is 450tns per day, with plans to upgrade this to 660tpd
Los Mangos Mine
Los Mangos produced 128,000 tonnes in 2018. It has a similar development configuration to La Ye, however, the levels are spaced at 25m and the orebody dip is 30o to 40o. Mining is carried out by a non-mechanised, hand held room & pillar method, with some pillar robbing where possible.
Los Mangos-Icacales is starting development and production at Level 4 (370m depth) and its development goes down to Level 6 (500m).
An aerial view of the El Bagre plant can be seen below.
Operations
The processing facilities consist of:
- Crushing, concentration, floatation, leaching and smelting
- Merrill Crowe plant with a metallurgical recovery of 85% on average
Average production in the period 2010-2017 was 20,490 ozs Au by year. The estimated production in 2020 is 15,000 ozs Au. In total there has been around 800,000 tonnes of ore production since 2010 with an average gold grade ore or 4,2 g/t with some 150,000 ozs Au produced since 2010.
The actual production cost is US$991 per oz Au Eq, including direct mining costs and SG&A.
The 2019 unit operating costs were:
- Underground Mining: US$62 per underground tonne mined
- Processing: US$24 per tonne processed
- G&A: US$23 per tonne processed
- Total: US$109 per tonne processed
The mine operates continuously on a three work-shift roster and employs 650 workers on three work shifts, 440 in the mine, 60 processing facilities, 60 planning, 80 maintenance, 10 administration.
Resources & Reserves
The projects have had a strong resource replacement trend since 2013 when the resources/reserves made a substantial leap.
Qualified
Person
Paulo J. Andrade, B.Sc. Senior Geologist, VP Exploration for Soma is the Qualified Person, who is responsible for the technical information contained on this website.