Chaarat release maiden mineral resource estimate for Karator
Company "100% committed to bringing Tulkabash online"
Chaarat Gold is focusing on building up its Kyrgyz Republic Tulkubash project in 2024, chief financial officer David Mackenzie told Mining Journal.
Today, it has released a maiden mineral resource estimate for its Karator prospect, which is 2km from Tulkabash, for 207,000oz gold @0.96 g/t gold of indicated and inferred JORC compliant resources, with a cut off grade of 0.21ppm au.
Chaarat is not a new company, but rather it had been developing and then operating the Kapan gold mine in Armenia since 2018, as well as developing the Tulkubash resource and Kyzyltash gold projects in the Kyrgyz Republic since 2014.
The company exited from Armenia last year.
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The focus now is to develop Tulkabash, Mackenzie said.
Tulkubash is expected to produce 95,000oz gold pa with all in sustaining costs of between $1,000-$1,100/oz from 2025 (subject to FID occurring by end Q1 2024), through the development of an open pit operation and simple heap leach processing achieving average recovery of approximately 75%.
"We're focusing on getting Tulkabash up and running," he said. "We are 100% focused on getting that prepared."
Tulkabash has been derisked, Mackenzie added, on the back of significant contracts (EPC, O&M and mining) being signed with Power Construction Corp of China, the Kygyz subsidiary of Power Construction Corporation of China International Group Ltd in October 2023.
It is aiming to complete project financing in the near term with final investment decision planned in Q1 2024.
"We have streamlined our project as much as possible," Mackenzie explained. "We have contractors who can do three things, rather than one and we have cheaper labour from China."
It also holds good relations with the Kygyz government, having hosted a parliamentary delegation on site and joined with the government to promote Kygyz mining at trade shows.
The company has good relations with the community also, having been in the region for almost 20 years and contributing $200,000 pa on community projects, including building schools, giving scholarships, maintaining hospitals equipment.
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