G Mining Ventures (GMIN) has agreed to acquire tenements in Brazil’s Gurupi Gold Belt, including the CentroGold project, from wholly-owned subsidiaries of BHP Group.
Under the terms of the purchase and sale agreement, the Canada-based mining company will grant BHP a 1% net smelter return (NSR) royalty on the initial one million ounces of gold produced at the tenements. This will increase to a 1.5% NSR royalty on all subsequent gold production.
Located in the state of Maranhão, the CentroGold project encompasses 47 tenements covering approximately 1,900km2.
The Brazilian project hosts multiple identified gold targets along a 80km plus mineralised trend, including the Blanket, Contact, and Chega Tudo open pit deposits.
Oz Minerals, which was later acquired by BHP in 2023, released a pre-feasibility study (PFS) on the Blanket and Contact deposits in 2019.
The PFS estimated a 10-year mine life with an average annual gold production of 100,000 to 120,000 ounces per year. In the initial two years of operation, production is expected to peak at 190,000 to 210,000 ounces of gold per year.
G Mining Ventures intends to redesign the project’s size, scope, and development timeline to suit the company’s long-term growth plans.
According to G Mining Ventures, the CentroGold project is an advanced-stage exploration asset with extensive exploration and engineering work completed to date.
G Mining Ventures president and CEO Louis-Pierre Gignac said: “We are excited to acquire another prospective project and begin to grow into the multi-asset growth company we always envisioned to become.
“CentroGold boasts an attractive starting resource base on a large land package that covers around 1,900km2 with significant exploration upside, located within a proven geological belt.”
Subject to customary conditions, including BHP receiving the appropriate approvals from the Vietnamese and Brazilian competition bodies, the transaction is anticipated to be completed in Q1 2025.
For the transaction, RBC Capital Markets serves as the financial adviser to G Mining Ventures and its board of directors. Blake, Cassels & Graydon and Mattos Filho, Veiga Filho, Marrey Jr. e Quiroga Advogados are the company’s legal advisers.
In a separate announcement, G Mining Ventures said that its fully owned Oko West gold project in Guyana will require an initial capital cost (capex) of $936m, based on a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) study.
The Oko West project is planned as a mix of conventional open pit mine and mechanised long hole open stoping underground mine.
It will have an on-site treatment of the mined material processed through a conventional circuit consisting of comminution, gravity concentration, cyanide leach and adsorption via carbon-in-leach (CIL), carbon elution and gold recovery circuits.
The open pit mine will have a life of mine (LOM) of 15 years, while the underground mine will have a LOM of 13 years. The mill will operate for 13 years.
Last week, the company achieved commercial production at its fully-owned Tocantinzinho (TZ) gold project in Pará State, Brazil.
