Hi MDMNjaded,
“SERNAGEOMIN” is the main mine permitting authority in Chile. Several of their reps were on-site a while back at the DL2 Mine operations. They were heaping praises on the job Auryn was doing especially in regards to the high-tech nature of Auryn’s operations and their compliance with the various new ESG protocols.
The mining regulators had reps there from some of their various “seremis”/branches, and several Auryn employees even teamed up with various mining officials to hit the road and provide “workshops” to the various players in the mining community as to things like ESG compliance and even technological breakthroughs in the industry.
One of Auryn’s geoscientists, a Senor Albujar, is apparently renowned for using the most advanced and safest blasting techniques available to the industry. Maurizio, literally “wrote the book” on accepted ways to maintain compliance with the new ESG protocols. He started his own software firm that sells the software to the mining community. I think you could safely say that Auryn is in pretty good stead with the Chilean mining regulators. Maurizio is a “master schmoozer”.
A 100 tonne-per-day froth flotation facility is about the most benign ore processing facility on the face of the earth from a permitting point of view. If you use “dry stacking” for the storage of the discards/“tailings”, as Auryn opted to do, the environmentalists absolutely love you. The other way to store the discarded “tailings” involves the construction of “tailings ponds” which have earthen walls/burms, that can sometimes breach and release toxic components into the local watershed. “Mt. Polley”, in Canada, is a good example of this.
FF facilities have a vast variety of “cells”, “banks of cells”, “columns”, etc. that are used. The characteristics of the ore being processed will dictate the combination of these components and the idealized “flow sheet” to put into use in order to maximize recovery of the sought-after metals. “SERNAGEOMIN” wants to protect the surrounding communities where mining occurs. They insist that you file with them a “TECHNICAL DOSSIER” outlining every tiny detail of your proposed facilities. If a miner files with them an assertion that they are going to use a certain concentration of “ethyl xanthate” as a reagent and if the miner later opts to use a reagent that is much more caustic to the environment, then SERNAGEOMIN has the right to yell at the miner.
In a “TECHNICAL DOSSIER”, a miner needs to outline how it is going to take care of precious resources like water. SERNAGEOMIN needs to keep the people over at the Environmental branch of the Chilean government, the “SEA”, happy. Auryn’s engineers will work with the engineers at the manufacturer to delineate all of the technical specifics of the plant design that Auryn chose.
If a miner is going to have trouble in permitting, it will probably be associated with the SEA. Thankfully, the SEA signed off on the new Chilean “SMALL PRODUCERS MINING STATUTE” wherein they have promised to fastrack the environmental permitting for any miners voluntarily agreeing to keep production rates at 1,000 tonnes per month maximum per adit being mined. Auryn is operating under this new statute.
A producing miner like Auryn, will do preliminary studies of their ore characteristics on a “lab bench” scale. This will give them a rough outline of what froth flotation techniques works best on their ore. Once you build the physical plant, then the serious “tweaking” occurs to the “flow sheet”. You need significant “sample size” to do the fine-tuning. In the lab you can only get a preliminary read on what works best because the “sample sizes” are so small.
One thing that is critical to establish is the idealized “grind size”. A lot of times this comes out to be around 75 microns as being the particle size that results in the best recovery rates. All ores are different.
“PERMITTING” in Chilean mining is not a single event, it is a long-term process. Starting out with a good rapoire with the permitting authorities is a very good start. Over time, Auryn will be ramping up the “throughput” of their FF plant to who knows what levels. As noted, the new Chilean “SMALL MINING PRODUCERS STATUTE” markedly streamlines the permitting process if a miner voluntarily agrees to mine no more than 1,000 tonnes per month from each adit they put into production. This is a very good thing for a miner with 6 different “Main Veins” to choose from.
If a miner wants to put in a “CARBON IN LEACH” (“CIL”) plant, which uses cyanide to harvest the gold, then the permitting process is going to be a lot more complicated and take longer. I could see where Auryn might opt to put in a “CIL” plant later on, but for now, with the price of gold where it is, they can make a fortune with just an FF plant.
You might vaguely recall a statement made by one of Maurizio’s collaborators at the San Sebastian University’s Mining Engineering Department. His name is Luis de la Torre. He used to be the Head of Underground Operations for Yamana (a major miner taken over by Pan Am silver) at their immense El Penon gold-silver mine.
At El Penon, Yamana also had 6 “Main Veins” they were developing via 38 different adits. Luis de la Torre predicted that the ADL Mining District operations would have many of the same characteristics as does El Penon once established. Seasoned mining professionals have the ability to visualize where a certain mining district might be headed through time. They’ve been through enough mine cycles to predict where a deposit might be headed. Maurizio is also a visionary; he’s built a lot of corporations through the years in a variety of industries.
As far as the nonstop dire predictions including things like it might take light years for Auryn’s DL2 Mine to become permitted, I would recommend listening to Maurizio’s prediction that they figure on commissioning the FF plant “BY THE 3RD QUARTER, 2025. He’s in constant communication with the manufacturers, the regulators, and the firm he hired to draft the “TECHNICAL DOSSIER”. Think about it, would the financiers over at “Stracon” cut a $4 million check to Auryn if they were concerned about inordinate delays in the permitting process. They manage 80 mines between Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. They have been involved in the permitting process for many dozens of FF plants in Latin America.
Auryn management has clearly articulated that they have already placed orders for the new “mill” components like crushers and ball mills. In their most recent quarterly update they cited: “The engineering and construction project for the plant is in full swing. While the basic components of the flotation plant are being manufactured, we are commissioning the fabrication of other individual units and completing the project’s technical dossier for submission to SERNAGEOMIN in January 2025.“ We don’t know how much these new “individual units” (flotation “cells”) that recently got commissioned for fabrication, OVER AND ABOVE THE ORIGINAL ORDER PLACED, will add to the daily “throughput”. Why would management “double down” on their original order if they had concerns about the timing of permitting?