Peak Gold PEA (Alaska) shows robust grade and low operating cost

Posted by Daniel Gleeson on 25th September 2018

Royal Gold reports that the Peak Gold, LLC joint venture, of which its Royal Alaska, LLC subsidiary owns a 40% interest, has completed a PEA on the Peak Gold project located near Tok, Alaska, USA. The PEA presents a robust open pit mining operation with attractive economics at base case gold and silver prices. All results presented herein are on a 100% Peak Gold basis.

Highlights of the PEA results, assuming base case metal price parameters of $1,250/oz of gold and $17.00/oz of silver, include:

  • Pre-tax NPV5% of $393 million and IRR of 37.0%
  • After-tax NPV5% of $283 million and IRR of 29.1%
  • Mine life of eight years with a 24-month pre-production period
  • 9.3 Mt processed at an average grade of 3.99 g/t Au and 11.7 g/t Ag
  • Average metallurgical recoveries of 91.6% for gold and 57.0% for silver
  • Life of mine recovered gold of 1.093 Moz and 1.996 Moz of silver
  • Life of mine strip ratio of 3.9 t of waste to tonnes of material processed
  • Life of mine total cash cost of $428/oz of gold recovered, and $/470/oz of gold recovered including sustaining capital
  • Life of mine capital cost of $340 million, consisting of $294 million of initial development capital, and sustaining capital and closure costs of $46 million
  • After-tax payback period for initial development capital of approximately two years.

The PEA was prepared by JDS Energy and Mining of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

“The results of the PEA are a significant milestone and show that the Peak Gold Project is one of the most interesting emerging gold projects in the US,” commented Tony Jensen, President and CEO of Royal Gold. “The combination of robust grade, near-surface open-pit resource, and a large and prospective land package located close to existing infrastructure, makes the Peak Gold project unique. Royal Gold is committed to this exciting project over the long term and will focus on opportunities to realize the value of our interest in a manner more closely aligned with our core business model.”

The PEA considers a conventional truck and shovel open-pit mining operation covering the North, Main and West Peak deposits, feeding a 3,500 t/d processing plant with two-stage crushing, grinding and a CIL recovery circuit, with production of gold-silver doré bullion on site. The PEA is based on an update of the mineral resource estimate for the Peak and North Peak deposits previously announced by Royal Gold (June 2, 2017 press release).