Osino Resources has estimated overall capital costs of $365m for its Twin Hills gold project in central Namibia, based on the findings of a definitive feasibility study (DFS).
The capital cost for the open pit mining operation involves $34m in contingency costs, construction capital of $311m, and capitalised pre-strip costs of $18m, said the Canadian gold exploration and development company.
The DFS has been prepared by Lycopodium Minerals Canada.
According to the DFS, the Twin Hills gold project will have a total gold production capacity of 1.98moz over its life of mine.
With a mine life of 13 years, the Twin Hills gold project will annually produce 176koz of gold in the first five years.
The throughput at the Twin Hills mineral processing plant is five million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of ore feed.
Besides, the DFS has estimated gold recovery of 92% by using conventional three-stage crushing, ball milling, gravity separation, preoxidation and carbon-in-leach (CIL) circuit plus filtration and dry-stack tailings deposition.
Osino Resources stated that the Twin Hills project will have an after-tax net present value (NPV) of $480m and an internal rate of return of 28% at a discount rate of 5% and $1,750/oz gold price.
The payback period of the gold project is estimated to be 2.2 years.
Osino Resources co-founder, president, and CEO Heye Daun said: “Now that the DFS has been completed, we will immediately commence with detailed engineering and our vision is to reach a fully financed construction decision by the end of 2023.
“The results of this DFS demonstrate that Twin Hills is a very robust, cash generative project which will deliver outstanding returns to shareholders once it goes into production, hopefully towards the end of 2025 or early 2026.”
The Canadian gold exploration and development company expects to select a company for the front-end engineering design (FEED) early in Q3 2023.
Earlier this year, Osino Resources secured the environmental clearance certificate (ECC) for the Twin Hills project from the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT).
