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eURope

Bulking up in the Balkans

driatic Metals plc could be awarded an
Aexploitation permit for one of the two
key deposits which make up the company’s
Vareš polymetallic project in Bosnia and
Herzegovina by the end of the month.
Following the issue of an environmental
permit for the Veovača deposit in late May,
Adriatic quickly applied to Bosnia’s Federal
Ministry of Spatial Planning for an urban
planning permit which will complete the full
set of regulatory approvals required for a
prized exploitation permit.
Speaking to Paydirt while on the ground
in Bosnia last month, Adriatic managing di-
rector Paul Cronin indicated the award of
the Veovača environmental permit was the
strongest indicator yet that an exploitation
permit for the deposit was imminent.
“We’re guiding end of July at this point,”
Cronin said. An environmental permit has been issued for Veovaca, one of the key deposits at Adriatic’s
“The environmental permit as a single Vareš polymetallic project in Bosnia and Herzegovina
permit isn’t that significant, but as a demon-
stration of the Bosnian Government’s will- tion payback is just eight months, based on “Adriatic was born essentially on the
ingness to work with us it is very significant. conservative metal pricing assumptions. strategy of finding ex-Yugoslav archive
Normally these permits take two years, we Having recently raised $25 million via boxes full of drilling details and geology de-
got ours in six months. I think that’s a rec- an institutional placement, Adriatic will be tails and seeing whether there’s economic
ognition from the federation they want to funded through to first construction works mines there where we could do more ex-
see this mine built and put into production currently slated for the first half of 2021, ploration and eventually put into produc-
as soon as possible. pending project finance. tion,” he said.
“We’ve always said the exploitation per- Cronin said the global COVID-19 pan- “I think the guys at Tenthyan had a simi-
mit is a series of permits that you’ve got to demic had so far not adversely impacted lar sort of strategy, but because Serbia is
get in a consecutive order. The environ- the company’s project development time- really well staked, they had to get creative
mental one is the biggest one; it’s the long- line. in how they put that land package together.
est lead time, it’s the one that requires the “I think COVID has probably delayed We’d been following their project for some
most money and the most work in terms things a little bit in terms of the time that time and knew they were missing those
of preparing the submission. Now we’re it’s taken Government to turn things around two core parts of their licences, but when
just waiting on our urban planning permit, because they’ve just been pretty occupied they put those together [in late March] we
which we understand is not too far away.” with other issues and a lot of government just jumped at the opportunity.
The environmental permit for Veovača staff were put on leave over the last 2-3 “We knew that they were going to have
(7.4mt @ 0.1 g/t gold, 41 g/t silver, 1.4% months,” he said. to do a capital raising and that was always
zinc and 0.9% lead) covers the historic “Things have definitely slowed down a lit- going to be a bit tricky in this environment,
mine, plant and tailings dam on the granted tle bit, but Bosnia has basically completely but we also knew given where it was in its
licence, located about 12km south-east of re-opened from June 1. All the bars, res- development lifecycle, the timing of finish-
the flagship Rupice deposit (9.4mt @ 1.8 taurants, shops, they’re all open and ac- ing the construction and development at
g/t gold, 183 g/t silver, 5.1% zinc and 3.3% tive again. Bosnia wasn’t badly affected by the Vareš project in Bosnia would work re-
lead) at Vareš. COVID, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, ally well in that we could just take that entire
Adriatic recently submitted its applica- but I think the Bosnian Government took development team and plonk them over
tion for an environmental permit for Rupice, the same level of precaution like you saw into Serbia to build that project.”
with a public hearing due to be held at the in Australia and New Zealand in terms of Adriatic recently started drilling in Serbia
time of print. Based on current timelines, an trying to contain it.” and is poised to deliver maiden resource
exploitation permit for that will be awarded Capping off a busy few months for Adri- estimates for Kizevak and Sastavci before
in late Q4 2020, after which the company atic, the company strengthened its pres- year’s end.
can finalise its submission for construction ence in the European continent by acquir- The company has budgeted to drill at
permits across the entire Vareš property. ing TSX-V listed Tethyan Resource Corp, least another 10,000m in Bosnia this year
A PFS is also due later this quarter and owner of the historic Kizevak and Sasravci and could approve another 3,000m pro-
will build on the promising results in last polymetallic mines in Serbia. gramme in Serbia once the current cam-
year’s scoping study which included oper- Cronin said Tethyan’s assets reaffirmed paign has wrapped.
ating costs of $US57/t, life-of-mine capex Adriatic’s position as an emerging Balkans- – Michael Washbourne
of $US174 million, post-tax NPV of $US916 focused base and precious metals devel-
million and IRR of 107.4%. Post-construc- oper.

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT JULY 2020 Page 65