Atico focusing on exploration to extend life of Colombia mine

Canada’s Atico Mining will continue with its exploration plans, aiming to extend the life of its Colombian mine El Roble.

El Roble is an underground copper and gold mine located in Chocó department.

“We are carrying out a very aggressive underground exploration campaign, which we believe will continue to extend the life of this mine,” Atico president Alain Bureau told BNamericas.

Bureau added that when Atico took over El Roble in 2013, “the mine was about to close, they said that the resources had run out. We’ve been here for more than 10 years and the exploration team has shown that there is continuity in the deposit. We think there is continuity in the area where we are, which is why we’re thinking about extending it.”

In the second quarter, production at El Roble totaled 3.7Mlb (1,678t) of copper and 2,850oz of gold in concentrate, representing year-on-year increases of 32% and 23%, respectively.

Atico also owns the roughly US$100mn La Plata project in Ecuador, which is primarily copper and gold but also hosts zinc and silver.

The environmental consultation process for La Plata carried out by the environment ministry is expected to be completed this year and the project would then obtain the environmental license that will allow construction of the mine to begin in 2025.

Carolina Orozco, chair of Ecuador's chamber of mines, told BNamericas that the industry expects construction of La Plata to begin in the second half of 2025.

Bureau added that the company will look for another project and that although it specializes in Latin America, it has reviewed several properties from Canada to Chile, of similar size to El Roble and La Plata.

Once in production, La Plata is expected to be Ecuador's fourth industrial-scale mine after Curipamba, owned by Silvercorp and Salazar Resources, where construction is expected to begin in the second quarter of next year.

At present, the only two industrial-scale mines in production in Ecuador are the Fruta del Norte gold mine and the Mirador copper operation.