Candente recovers gold from tailings in Mexico while helping promote tourism

According to Mining News Pro - El Oro is located in the state of Mexico in central Mexico.

In a press release, Candente said that the agreement has to be ratified every three years, when the municipality elects a new president and council members. Today, the Vancouver-based firm renewed the option of the New Tailings Agreement signed in 2017.

Such a renewal provides the Canadian miner with the right to recover all available gold and silver from the tailings deposit and pay to the Municipality of El Oro an 8% net profits interest, while retaining the first $1.5m from the 8% NPI payable to the local government.

According to Candente, the deal is directly related to a tourism agreement, which allows the municipality to operate tourist activities in part of the San Juan tunnel and the Providencia Shaft, located within the El Oro property.

The tailings being processed are located several kilometres apart from the sightseeing areas and the miner says the tourism activities in these facilities does not impact the development of the tailings.

First discovered in the 1500s, the El Oro deposit became one of the most important gold-silver camps in Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the San Rafael and Veta Verde veins produced over 8 million gold equivalent ounces.

In the early 1900s, Dos Estrellas Mining discovered the Veta Verde vein, but the company filed for bankruptcy in 1938 following a tailings dam slide. From then on until the 1960s, the federal government handed over the district to the workers cooperative but production was mininal.

From 1969 on, different companies explored the area. Since 2007, Candente’s subsidiary, Minera CCM S.A. de C.V., decided to focus on other veins besides the two that had been developed over the years.

Initially, the company drilled 4,096m in 11 holes undernearh old mine workings in four veins. Now, its experts know that there are 50 veins in the area.