Dateline Resources has revealed a potential ace up its sleeve at its 1.1-million-ounce Colosseum gold project outside Las Vegas in California, suggesting mine waste at the gold project could provide a crucial second revenue stream converting it into construction materials to serve the bustling southern Nevada concrete market.
The latest development stems from a recently tabled scoping study over the Colosseum project, confirming, the historic mine still has plenty of legs with a net present value (NPV) of US$235m at a conservative US$2200 gold price. Also, the latest data suggests the project can enhance its economics and reduce its environmental footprint by converting waste and tailings into saleable construction materials.
Management says the Colosseum project has been reimagined for broader opportunities thanks to recent expressions of interest by local concrete sector stakeholders with regard to the supply of aggregate to the construction industry. The conversations have prompted waste-to-aggregate studies, revealing that Colosseum’s primary waste rock types meet the necessary standards for use in both concrete and asphalt production.
After submitting several samples to Alkali Silica Reactivity (ASR) for testing, the company says all of the Colosseum project samples were deemed suitable for concrete, coming in well under the maximum allowable expansion metric of 0.1 per cent.
The potential dual revenue streams from aggregate and concrete sand could significantly benefit Colosseum’s bottom line, making the project not only a gold asset but a potentially integral player in Nevada’s infrastructure growth.
With construction of the new Southern Nevada International Airport underway, local demand for aggregate is expected to skyrocket. Dateline’s studies align with this development, positioning the company to serve major roadway and airport projects just 40km from the Colosseum mine.
Management says an upcoming Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) will incorporate further testing to assess both gold recovery optimization and the potential sales of aggregate and tailings material. Such sales could help offset capital costs early in the project lifecycle, with long-term upfront contracts with Nevada-based construction companies a potential financing source.
The old Colosseum mine has previously churned out gold as early as the late 1800s in the USA, before finally succumbing to a gold price below US$350 (A$525) an ounce in 1993 when production ceased.
In 1994, Barrick Gold made a successful takeover bid for the mine, after which Barrick held the Colosseum project for almost two decades with little work being done, believing then that only 300,000 ounces were left in reserves and the operation was too small to pursue.
Dateline acquired the Colosseum mine from Barrick in 2021, when Barrick was rationalising its non-core assets and promptly committed to the project’s first modern exploration and development program, reviewing all available exploration and production data and compiling a new digital database for both exploration planning and mineral resource modelling.
The latest scoping study at Colosseum proposes an impressive 635,000 ounces of gold production over 8.3 years could be achieved at an AISC per ounce of US$1490.
That number compares favourably to today’s gold price US$2600 an ounce or roughly AUD$4000 an ounce. Dateline will bank a total of US$1.344 billion in sales over the life of mine.
For Dateline, the growing Colosseum project now appears to present a multifaceted opportunity. While gold remains near all-time highs and the priority, the waste-to-aggregate strategy could reshape the project’s economics particularly for early-stage mining and perhaps the projects US$138 million of pre-production Capex.
Adding another revenue stream to produce not only gold at Colosseum, but become a leader in sustainability by repurposing waste could seriously bolster returns while reducing the project’s environmental impact.
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By Andrew Todd
