Development Project - Mara Rosa

Home to our flagship Posse Gold Project

Located in the municipality of Mara Rosa in the state of Goiás, Mara Rosa is approximately 360 kilometres north of Goiania, the state capital. The property hosts our flagship Posse Gold Project as well as several advanced drill targets that make up our regional exploration program, aimed at finding satellite deposits that could extend Posse’s mine life.

Mara Rosa At A Glance

Geologic overview

Mara Rosa primarily covers the Eastern Belt greenstone assemblage, with some coverage of the Western and Central belts as well. The Eastern Belt has a maximum thickness of 6 kilometres, generally strikes to the northeast, and dips moderately to steeply to the northwest.

It occurs in a regional thrust that probably acted as one of the primary dewatering conduits during the Neo-Proterozoic Brasiliano orogeny. The geophysical, geological, and geochemical data available demonstrate that this deposit occurs within a 50-kilometre structural corridor and localized within shear zones associated with potassium alteration and lower order gold-telluride mineralization.

Posse Gold Project

Flagship development Stage Posse Gold Project.

Posse is a shovel-ready gold project that is expected to be built within two years of breaking ground.

A brownfield site, it was mined by a different operator in the 1990s. There are two small pits from the previous operation, and excellent infrastructure. We will draw our labour from the town of Mara Rosa, where most people support the project.

Once built, it's anticipated that Posse will produce 102,000 gold ounces per year in its first four years, and have an average annual gold production of 84,000 ounces based on an initial mine life of 10 years. Average recoveries are expected to be 89.9% and the average strip ratio over the life of mine is anticipated to be 4.3.

NI 43-101 Posse Gold Project Feasibility Study (August 2020)
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About The Posse Gold Mine

Will be a conventional open pit and carbon-in-leach operation with dry stack tailings. We will employ contract miners who will use drill and blast, hydraulic excavators, haul trucks, and auxiliary mobile equipment.

Positive feasibility study results

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Base Case Consensus Case Bullish Case
Gold price per ounce
$1,400
$1,550
$1,730
BRL to US$
4.2
4.8
5.3
Initial capex
$133 million
$122 million
$115 million
Contingency
$12 million
$11 million
$10 million
Life of mine sustaining capital
$21 million
$18 million
$17 million
Life of mine total capital
$166 million
$151 million
$141 million
Closure costs
$5 million
$4 million
$4 million
Total operating cost per tonne
$20.94
$19.01
$17.73
Cash cost per ounce
$706
$658
$631
Average annual EBITDA, life of mine
$51 million
$65 million
$81 million
After-tax internal rate of return
25%
38%
50%
After-tax payback
2.6 years
1.9 years
1.5 years

NI 43-101 Resource Estimate (August 2020)

Category

Tonnes (millions) Grade (g/t gold) Contained gold (000 ounces)
Mineral Resources
Measured 14 1.20 510
Indicated 19 1.10 640
Total M&I 32 1.10 1,200
Inferred 0.1 0.52 1.7
Mineral Reserves
Proven 11.8 1.20 456
Probable 12.0 1.16 446
Total Proven and Probable 23.8 1.18 902
Notes

Regional exploration at Mara Rosa

The goal of our regional exploration program is to identify potentially economic gold deposits that could add to Posse’s existing resources and reserves and extend Posse’s initial mine life.

Airborne geophysics have identified a strong regional-scale 10-kilometre long anomaly that overlies the main northeast trending Posse structural corridor. The potassium anomaly suggests underlying host rocks are hydrothermally altered, which is consistent with observations found at the Posse Gold Deposit.

Pastinho

Located 3.5 kilometres northeast of the Posse Deposit on 6,000 hectares of exploration tenements, Pastinho is a gold mineralized structure approximately 800 to 900 metres long oriented in a northeast-southwest direction along the same structural trend. The apparent thickness varies from 10 to 20 metres and dips about 60 degrees northwest.

Geologically, Pastinho is similar to Posse. It is characterized by a hydrothermally altered thrusted shear zone developed along the contact between a biotite microcline gneiss (granodiorite composition) and metagabbro and/or amphibolite mafic rocks. There are structural fabrics including mylonites together with hydrothermal alteration minerals like silicification (quartz), biotite, sericite, and carbonate with associated disseminated sulphides that are typically 1-3% pyrite.

Our most recent diamond drilling increased the strike extent to 900 metres from the 150 metre long zone of near-surface gold mineralization defined by a previous operator. Key drill results include:

  • Hole LMR007A – 18.7 metres grading 0.84 g/t gold. It was oriented with an azimuth of 109.1 degrees and a dip of -50 degrees.
  • Hole 20P109 – 11 metres grading 0.74 g/t gold. It was oriented with an azimuth of 125 degrees and a dip of -59 degrees.

Surface trench work further extended the strike length of the Pastinho gold target to 1.5 kilometres. The current interpretation is that the surface trenching program has outlined the up-dip extension of Pastinho. There appear to be potentially up to five subparallel gold structures dipping northwest approximately 50-60 degrees. Pastinho, which has been drill-tested to a depth of approximately 100 metres, remains open at depth and along strike.

Mara Rosa regional exploration drilling and trenching results
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Figure 1 – Mara Rosa regional setting

Figure 2 – Potassium Channel Radiometric on Posse Trend

Figure 3 – Gold in soil anomalies along Posse Trend

Figure 4 – Plan view of Pastinho drill holes and gold intercepts

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