Adriatic Metals has kept its foot on the gas at its remarkable poly-metallic Vareš project in Bosnia with the ASX listed company continuing to successfully manage the global Coronavirus pandemic right across its operational areas and only experiencing minor delays as a result of some border closures. Adriatic has already drilled 2,800 metres this year of a planned 20,000m program between an impressive five drill rigs.
The company said that the Vareš municipality where it operates has seen no reported cases of the dreaded virus, however the company, like all many around the world, is practicing strict protocols to protect its on-site team.
It said a sixth rig is on the way now, but is a little delayed due to border closures. The ASX-listed company has permission from the municipality emergency coordinator the keep its rigs going 24 hours a day, which should churn out a swag of samples and resultant news flow.
Adriatic recently tabled a scoping study that shows a stunning, AUD$1.37b NPV for the project that includes payable concentrations of zinc, gold, silver, lead, copper, antinomy and barite.
Payback of the AUD$260m CAPEX is expected to be only 8 months after commencement of processing, with the project showing a very respectable post-tax IRR of 107.4%.
The study assumed that production will kick off around Q2 in 2022 with production from an underground mine at the Rupice deposit, followed by an open-pit mine at Veovača.
The Veovača prospect is an historical zinc-lead-barite-silver mine and Rupice is a high-grade poly metallic deposit. Adriatic is spoilt for choice in terms of what its key metal commodity might be with an amazing cocktail of ore grade minerals scattered throughout its projects.
As work towards the company’s pre-feasibility progresses, Adriatic said it has experienced few delays on this front as a result of the pandemic.
Recent drilling however looks to be expanding the size of the ore deposit and the company now says it may need to delay the completion of the pre-feasibility study so that it can undertake an update to its resource.
Things could be worse.
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