Name of the Project
Hardrock gold project.

Location
Geraldton, Ontario, Canada.

Project Owner/s
Greenstone Gold Mines (GGM), a 50:50 joint venture between Centerra Gold and Premier Gold Mines.

Project Description
The project proposes conventional openpit mining techniques with 10 m benches using hydraulic shovels. The openpit operation is planned to be owner-operated, with certain support activities outsourced.

Production drilling will be done using blast-hole drill rigs with rotary and down-the-hole drilling capability.

Most of the loading in the pit will be undertaken by three hydraulic face shovels (two of them are 26 m³ and one is 19 m³) and two 21 m³ front-end wheel loaders. The shovels and loaders will be matched with a fleet of 181 t payload mine trucks. As the openpit is recovering resources from previously producing underground mines, the presence of mined-out stopes was considered when designing the pits. Most of the underground openings are backfilled with sand fill or rock fill. Mining of the Hardrock main pit will take place in four phases, with the smaller satellite pit to the east mined in one phase. Waste rock will be disposed of in four distinct waste dumps, with three located around the pit and one further to the south. The openpit will generate 548.9-million tonnes of overburden and waste rock.

Gold recovery will comprise a crushing circuit (gyratory and cone), a grinding circuit (a high-pressure grinding roll, or HPGR, and a ball mill), preleach thickening, a leach and carbon-in-pulp circuit, cyanide destruction and tailings disposal, carbon elution and electrowinning, carbon regeneration and a gold refinery. The HPGR is expected to assist in reducing GGM’s operating costs and in providing consistent predictable mill tonnage throughput.

The processing plant is designed to operate at a throughput of 27 000 t/d and the mill operation schedule will be 24/7, 365 days a year, with an overall availability of 92%.

Potential Job Creation
The planned peak total operating workforce will comprise 544 employees.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an after-tax net present value, at a 5% discount rate, of $709-million and an internal rate of return of 14.4%.

Capital Expenditure
Initial capital expenditure is estimated at $1.25-billion.

Planned Start/End Date
Construction is expected to take 23 months and the total preproduction period is estimated at 42 months, which includes detailed engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning activities up to commercial production being declared.

Latest Developments
An affiliate of Orion Mine Finance Group has agreed to buy 50% of the GGM partnership, which owns the Hardrock project, for $225-million plus contingencies of about $75-million, part owner Premier Gold Mines announced in December 2020.

Orion would buy Toronto-listed Centerra’s 50% of the GGM and Premier holding the other share.

In early 2020, Centerra turned down Premier’s $205-million offer for its interest in the GGM. At the time, Premier said it needed a partner with the financial muscle to take the C$1.25-billion Hardrock project through to production.

Premier and Centerra have disagreed over the development-stage project. According to the Northern Miner, Centerra has accused Premier of inflating an October 2019 mineral resource and asking for a declaration that it should not be considered a feasibility study.

Premier has indicated that it will support a positive feasibility decision for the Hardrock project “based on the feasibility study conducted in 2019”.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
None stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
GGM, tel +1 905 829 3134 or fax +1 905 829 7880.
Premier Gold Mines manager of corporate development and investor relations Matthew Gollat, tel +1 807 346 1390, fax +1 888 346 1390 or email mgollat@premiergoldmines.com.
Centerra Gold VP of investor relations John Pearson, tel +1 416 204 1953 or email john.pearson@centerragold.com.