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Crusader advances gold strategy
Brazil-focused Crusader Resources
Ltd could pour first gold from its flag-
ship Juruena project before the end of
2017.
Despite only landing in the company’s
portfolio two years ago, Juruena is the
most advanced of Crusader’s develop-
ment projects and a second major drill-
ing campaign was ongoing at the time of
print.
The 6,000m programme is looking to
increase the size of the overall resource
(1.3mt @ 5.6 g/t gold for 234,000oz) as
well as convert some of the inferred re-
sources at the Querosene and Dona Ma-
ria deposits to indicated status.
A scoping study will follow a resource
upgrade announcement over the coming
months.
Juruena sits on the north-western tip of
the 400km long, 6 moz Alta Floresta gold
belt, Central Brazil, and was acquired by
Crusader from TSXV-listed Lago Dour-
ado Inc in July 2014 for just $C650,000
plus shares.
Crusader also picked up the highly
prospective Novo Astro artisanal mining
centre as part of the transaction.
“It’s where we see the real upside for
Gold to flow from Cascavel
First gold will be poured at Orinoco
Gold Ltd’s Cascavel project in Brazil
later this month.
In the lead-up to Latin America Down
Under, the final pieces of equipment for
the gravity circuit arrived on site after the ground, ready to bring to
containers carrying the critical compo-
nents were finally cleared through cus-
toms.
The delay meant the proposed start of
production at Cascavel was pushed back
on more than one occasion, but Orinoco
chief financial officer Tim Spencer said
the company could quickly make up for
lost time.
“Once we turn the plant on, we’ll start
commissioning in late June and then
we’ll put low-grade commissioning ore to
settle the plant down and then we’ll be
testing it with some higher grade ore, just
to see what sort of recoveries and rec-
onciliations we can take back,” Spencer
said.
“We would have loved to have been
producing gold by now, but that has
been delayed until July. The important
Paul Stephen
this project after we get Juruena into
production,” Crusader executive director
Paul Stephen said.
“Juruena represents an opportunity to
move very quickly and could possibly see
production within the next 18 months, but
Nova Astro is a much larger prize and
something that will require a bigger and
more exciting exploration programme, to
be hopefully funded out of the cash flow
from Juruena.
“This [belt] is highly likely, we think, to
host more than one major gold deposit.
We’re talking about a cluster of projects
over 8-9km.”
thing to take away is that
underground mine develop-
ment has been continuing
unabated and now we have
more than three months of
stoping ore set up under-
surface and put through the
plant.”
First gold from Cascavel
will cap a remarkable tran-
sition from explorer to pro-
ducer for Orinoco since listing in 2012.
Spearheaded by managing direc-
tor Mark Papendieck and Brazilian co-
founders Klaus Petersen and Marcelo de
Carvalho, the company has built up an
impressive land package along the Faina
greenstone belt and will enter production
without a JORC-compliant resource for
Cascavel.
“It’s a very difficult project to drill in the
sense you’re dealing with coarse gold, so
it’s not homogenous through the deposit,
which means you might drill some holes
that have very low grades, then you might
Gold exploration and development will
dominate Crusader’s plans for the rest
of this year and into 2017, as the com-
pany looks to take advantage of rising
precious metal prices and a depreciating
Brazilian real.
Borborema, in the north-east of the
country, is set for a second chance at
life after being put on the backburner fol-
lowing the acquisition of Juruena. The
company is completing a scoping-level
study on a smaller 2 mtpa operation to
mine the upper lens of the 42mt @ 1.2 g/t
gold reserve.
“It’s an asset we believe is going to
come back to the market’s attention,”
Stephen said.
“We’ve done a series of optimisations,
really focusing in on lowering the strip ra-
tio because the biggest single cost to this
project is material movements.
“If we see a run on the gold price, this
is really a lottery ticket that is going to
continue to appreciate.”
Stephen said he expected the Posse
iron ore mine, about 35km from Belo
Horizonte, would continue to remain prof-
itable for at least the next three years.
– Michael Washbourne
hit a bonanza every 10 or 15
holes,” Spencer said.
“We would have to drill on
a couple of metre spacing
and spend tens of millions
of dollars to get this thing
towards a resource, or even
a reserve. It makes more
sense to spend that money
Tim Spencer developing and collating all
the knowledge you get from
underground development
to show this can work.”
Orinoco will initially process 40,000
tpa at Cascavel, but throughput should
double as production levels increase and
more ounces are added to the mining in-
ventory through regional exploration.
Spencer said the company’s Septem-
ber quarterly report would “make for
some very good reading” as it would con-
tain the first actual production numbers
and costings from the project.
– Michael Washbourne
AUSTRALIA’S PAYDIRT JULY 2016 PAGE 95