Okvau Gold Project

In November 2019, Emerald Resources (Emerald), a Perth based explorer and developer of gold projects received approval from the Cambodian Council of Ministers to execute a mineral investment agreement for the Okvau gold project 275km north-east of Phnom Penh.

This approval was the first of its kind for a large-scale mining project in the region.

The original Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) carried out by Mintrex and completed in May 2017 was based on the development of a 2.0 million tonnes per annum operation over an initial operating mine life of more than seven years. Further, the project’s economics were revisited in November 2019 and given the prevailing gold price it was agreed that the DFS demonstrated high grade, low cost, compelling development economics.

Mintrex has had a long-standing and mutually rewarding relationship with the Board and Management of Emerald Resources over many years. Over the course of this relationship, a strong spirit of collaboration and trust has developed.

When tackling a major project such as Okvau, both Emerald and Mintrex have been able to rely on each other to work together as highly skilled and diverse teams of specialists to get the job done. Throughout the project, and particularly as a result of the challenges that COVID-19 presented, project and design meetings were often convened quickly with a need to work together virtually and over long distances.

Also, given Emerald’s substantial in-house expertise and experience, Emerald and Mintrex were able to efficiently separate the more complex and critical engineering design tasks, where Mintrex could add the greatest value, from those tasks, such as piping layouts, where less of our input was required. This approach leveraged both teams to deliver significant, overall project benefits.

Mintrex completed the design work on Okvau in December 2020. Construction is now well advanced, and first production is scheduled for Q2 2021.