SolGold has built an exploration portfolio of more than 3,200sq.km in Ecuador over the past eight years, in one of the most prospective countries in the world for copper and gold porphyries, and was one of the big winners in the 2017 exploration concession auction, the last time the country awarded exploration ground.
The company is seeking partners for 20 concessions totalling 86,000 hectares throughout the country and will consider different deal structures from earn-in agreements to joint ventures. They comprise four projects in northern Ecuador (Aurora, El Descanso, Agustin and Yatubi) and six in southern Ecuador (Zhucay, Machos, San Antonio, Carmen, El Cisne and Sacapalca).
"With the Alpala deposit on its way, there is only so much we can do in Ecuador and we want to focus our attention on our more advanced projects with large consistent porphyry systems," Marshall said.
"We are looking to bring in partners on concessions that are at the start of the exploration process as we hope this will provide for a quicker discovery timeline on grassroots projects and be value accretive to SolGold shareholders."
Marshall, a block-caving expert, became a director of the company in October 2020 to bolster the technical capability of the board as SolGold progresses towards construction of Alpala. He will become interim CEO from April, following the announcement earlier this year of Nick Mather stepping down from the role.
SolGold believes the inability of explorers to directly apply for concessions in Ecuador should result in high demand for its areas.
The mining law in Ecuador means the government can only award concessions through a competitive bidding process and no new concessions can be awarded until the government opens another auction window, which may happen later this year once the presidential elections have been completed in April.
"We have been approached many times by companies asking for deals on our ground," SolGold head of exploration Jason Ward told Mining Journal.
"We have seen that as we advance projects to an advanced stage, our staffing requirements increase from a few people to 200 at Porvenir, for example. We need to focus on the projects where we have done the most work. We have built a portfolio with value in it, but it is time to allow other people to come and explore it."
The first hole at the Cacharposa target at Porvenir returned 899.3m grading 0.4% copper and 0.18 grams per tonne gold, or 0.53% copper-equivalent.
The projects on offer are principally in the Miocene and Jurassic belts and many have seen initial work such as stream sediment sampling and mapping, including the identification of anomalies. "Some will be of interest to companies with adjoining projects," said Ward.
The company said none of the projects would be impacted by the recent vote to ban mining in the Cuenca region of Azuay province. "The ban only affects future projects with no mining title as it is not retroactive. We have two projects in Azuay and our legal interpretation is that the vote will not affect these," said Ward.
Marshall said the twice delayed pre-feasibility study on Alpala would be released in the fourth quarter, with the company taking additional time to determine the mine plan. "Mine plans usually go through at least three iterations and this will be the second for Alpala. We are looking at a slightly smaller, more selective operation that we think we can bring into production much faster than the previous plan, mining 30% less material, although still producing the same amount of copper. It is worth spending some time to develop an optimised mine plan," he said.
The May 2019 preliminary economic assessment looked at four underground block caving mine production scenarios from 40 million tonnes per year to 60Mtpy, each with a multi-decade mine life and a pre-production capital requirement estimated at $2.4-2.8 billion. It estimated average annual production for the first 25 years at 207,000t copper, 438,000 ounces gold and 1.4 million ounces silver in concentrate, with the LOM annual average estimated at 150,000t of copper, 245,000oz gold and 913,000oz silver.
Shares in SolGold are trading at 22p, valuing the company at £455 million.
