[Music] thank you welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing News Network I'm speaking with Marshall Koval president and CEO of Lumina gold and is providing an update on the progress of the company's conveyors project in Ecuador hello Marshall hey Marilyn how are you today I'm good how are you everything's fine a lot to a lot to talk about today yeah so let's get on it so I guess before we get on the meat of our discussion if you could provide an introduction of Lumina gold at the


progress on your Congress house project yeah so limited gold uh we have a single asset in Ecuador the king greyhose project and if we look back Lumina the Lumina group was founded by Ross Beatty sort of in 2003 I've been with Ross through all the group companies uh since then I joined in 2004 actually and we've been in Ecuador since 2014 advancing the cabrals project it's the 26th largest primary gold deposit in the world in all categories production resource development and we just put out a


pre-feasibility study that showed a 2.2 billion dollar npv at a five percent discount rate using 6850 gold and 375 copper so we're moving forward with the next steps of the project advancing it towards a feasibility study and that's kind of where we sit today wait that's very exciting uh but you know I understand you've made a recent announcement about a new deal with Wheaton precious metals could you give us the highlights of that deal and what it means for congress yeah I mean this


is a fantastic deal both for Whedon for uh the Lumina group Lumina gold and for the country of Ecuador and it really gives us a third party verification that the project is on the path towards uh development basically what the deal is is 300 million dollars that Wheaton precious metals is putting forth in a streaming deal and there's uh 48 million dollars so that'll help take us through the feasibility study stage and permitting stage and then there's 252 million of that is available for


construction of the project once a construction decision is made and basically what we're doing is we're streaming uh 6.6 of the gold production uh with Wheaton and it's it's a real favorable cost of capitalists so I think uh it just validates the scale of the project the importance of this project both in the broader mining sector um very few projects have the scale of uh of this uh congrejos project which will produce about 371 uh thousand ounces of gold a year over a 26 year of


my life and basically this uh this deal really helps us get the Sun the path towards Construction if you alluded to a pre-feasibility study that you also just recently released and you've mentioned that some of the highlights which could you delve a little bit deeper into some of the important highlights from that study yeah so so we've really uh approached a study from both a technical perspective but also a social and environmental perspective as well so it's a quite large uh project we've scaled it


initially at 30 000 tons per day throughput and then in year four it'll go to sixty thousand and then years uh seven it'll go to eighty thousand and we've also Incorporated a lot of design into the project that will be helpful for an environmental and social perspective like dry stack tailings facility Well where we will recycle about 85 percent of the water back to the plant we also are in an area that's a lot of pyroelectric so a majority of the power for the project will be higher up uh


hydroelectric so there's a lot of aspects built into the project design both technically economically and socially so we're really excited to move the project forward yeah and that's really an interesting um progression because as you know you know in you know with the market that's currently happening um the prices of gold has been increasing and yet uh supply has not really kept up with demand no no new mindset are being built so this is a really you're in a a really great time


to be in this spot right yeah you know the major in mid-tier companies are are consolidating right now and and one of the big issues facing the industry the broader gold industry is reserve replacement so when you have an asset like canbre host that is over a 26 year my life and has the potential to survive several Cycles in in the sector it becomes an attractive company or project for the major lining companies in the mid tier so we'll continue to advance the project and MSC where things go


so how is Ecuador so the the project is in Ecuador um can you talk give us a little bit of an overview of how the operating climate in Ecuador and what this project sort of uh me would mean for that country in terms of uh its mining industry yeah so so the mining industry is really opened up since 2014 when we entered the country the fiscal regime and the regulatory regime has improved and Ecuador has been competitive with its neighbors in in Peru and Chile and Colombia and basically what the project


uh means to the country was it's on the scale of the two major projects that have been bought the Mirador project is a copper project and then the uh fruta del Norte blending gold's mine uh have gone into production so that's really set the stage for Ecuador becoming more recognized as a mining jurisdiction and that you can build projects around a billion dollars initial Capital which king greyhose is in the country you can permit them you can Finance them internationally and I think the Wheaton


deal also with um Can grejos shows that there is international interest in advancing and putting lines into production in the country so overall the infrastructure in the country is good we're in uh the western part of the country Southwest where there's really good infrastructure we're close to a port facility so the project has a lot of advantages in that regards and we're in a very good social and environmental setting his way yeah could you talk a bit more about that like so as you're you know your pro


your project is progressing uh towards production uh what are some of the environmental and sustainable aspects of the project that you're enforcing or implementing right so there's uh there's ample water in the region but obviously water needs to be protected and you need to build as much water preservation and minimal impacts to the environment with water in the project design and as I mentioned earlier the dry stack kalings is a big component of that the uh the other thing too is the mirror door mine it's a large


copper porphry deposit that is being mined across on the Eastern side of the country they're following their concentrates all the way across the country some 300 kilometers to Puerto Bolivar which we are only 40 kilometers away and will produce a concentrate as well so if you look at the the impacts in in a in an ESG perspective we don't have as far to haul we're recycling water you know with our tailings facility we're generating a lot of the or the power that's being used in the


project a majority of it's generated in uh hydropower so there's a lot of those aspects the the other the other thing too is we're doing a lot of work with re-vegetation most of the area of the project has been you know second generation third generation growth of Timber and then grazing so we're doing a lot of tree planting and habitat restoration and that sort of work in areas Disturbed not by our project but previous exploration work but General use in the communities and the


landowners of the areas so those sort of things paying attention to biodiversity and that sort of thing is is a real key Cornerstone and then obviously working with local communities making them understand kind of what what we're doing with the project employment programs and Education Health and that sort of stuff that we can help the local communities who have is a big focus of confident right so where do you go from here what's the next steps and plans for the rest of the year yeah so basically what


we're doing right now is we just announced a few weeks back the PFS we're working with all of our Consultants looking at the recommendations to move the project to a feasibility study and we're doing that in combination with Wheaton as well talking about the approach there so what we're doing is doing the planning for the next phase of work and that'll initially be field work some more drilling to take the resource in the first three years of the project up to a measured category if we can


report a proven Reserve in the feasibility study we're doing all the other infrastructure technical field work and planning so that's kind of the course that we're on and over the next 18 months we'll be really in depth into the feasibility study again working on the engineering as well it sounds like a exciting times ahead and looking forward to having you back here too give us some progress of the project all right thanks for your listeners time and thanks for your repair and thank you for watching everyone join


us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights