Desarrollos Mineros San Luis S.A. de C.V. (Desarrollos Mineros San Luis)

Description:

The description included in this profile was taken directly from an official source and has not been modified or edited by BNamericas’ content team. However, it may have been automatically translated.

Los Filos is located 180 km south of Mexico City in the municipality of Eduardo Neri, Guerrero State, Mexico. The property is accessible by paved road and an on-site airstrip and includes 39 concessions covering 148,908 hectares. 

The Los Filos mine complex began commercial production in 2008. Equinox Gold assumed ownership following its merger with Leagold in March 2020. The operation consists of three open-pit mines (Los Filos, Bermejal and Guadalupe) and two underground mines (Los Filos and Bermejal). Equinox Gold started mining the Guadalupe open pit and Bermejal underground deposits in 2021 as part of the Company’s plans to expand Los Filos production. 

Gold from the Los Filos deposits is recovered from crushed and run-of-mine ore via a conventional heap leach and ADR (adsorption-desorption-recovery) process. Infrastructure on site includes primary and secondary crushing plants with 18,000 tpd capacity, an overland conveyor system, an agglomerator, two heap leach pads (one for ROM and one for crushed ore, with associated conveyors and stackers), two pregnant solution collection ponds (one for each heap), one recirculation pond and two contingency water ponds, and an ADR plant and gold refinery. Equinox Gold is considering building a carbon-in-leach plant to process higher-grade ore, as described in Growth Projects.

For 2021, Equinox Gold expects Los Filos to produce between 120,000-140,000 oz of gold at AISC of $1,790-$1,850 per ounce of gold sold. In a normal operating year, Los Filos would produce from 180,000-200,000 ounces of gold at much lower costs. Unfortunately, production has been hampered from government-mandated COVID-19 restrictions in Q2 2020, when the Mexican federal government ordered all mines in the country to stop operating, and then due to community blockades from September to December 2020 and again from June to July 2021. The mine has been operating continuously since the end of July 2021 and the Company is working hard to build stronger relationships with the communities at Los Filos to facilitate long-term stable operating conditions.