Apollo Silver delivers positive PEA for California project
TSX-V-listed Apollo Silver Corp has reported positive results from a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) at its Calico silver project, California, in the US, with the PEA estimating an after-tax net present value (NPV) of $737-million, an after-tax internal rate of return of 25% and a payback period of three years.
The PEA is based on the development of an openpit mining operation at the Waterloo deposit, feeding a conventional 8000 t/d milling and cyanidation leach plant with an initial planned processing life of about 15 years.
“This PEA shows that Waterloo alone can support a 15-year operation producing about five-million ounces of silver a year, with an after-tax NPV of $737-million at $55/oz silver, and the base case does not yet draw on [the Langtry deposit’s] 49-million inferred ounces.
“Waterloo sits on private land with vested surface mining rights and would produce doré in the US, at a time when silver has been added to the US List of Critical Minerals. Our focus now is derisking: studies on water, power and capital inputs are under way, and we are advancing toward a prefeasibility study,” says Apollo president and CEO Colin Sutherland.
The capital cost of the project is estimated at $715.16-million and construction is expected to take two years.
