Equinox Gold starts mining at Santa Luz

Equinox Gold starts mining at Santa Luz

Published in www.mining.com

Equinox Gold announced on Tuesday that mining activities are underway at its new Santa Luz gold mine in Brazil.

According to the company, construction remains on track to commence commissioning in Q4 2021 and pour gold in Q1 2022, with the expectation of producing 110,000 ounces of gold annually for the first five years of operations.

Mining activities are currently focused on removing waste from two locations and developing access roads, ramps, dumps and ore storage areas in preparation for a pre-stripping campaign prior to mining ore in late 2021.

As a brownfield past-producing mine, the majority of site services and infrastructure are already in place at Santa Luz.

Using the base case $1,500/oz gold price, Santa Luz is expected to produce 903,000 ounces of gold and generate $436 million in after-tax net cash flow over an initial 9.5-year mine life.