White Gold won the auction for a license to develop the largest gold deposit in Russia’s Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), which is Kyuchus. This was announced by Seligdar (MOEX: SELG, SELGP), one of the leading gold producers in Russia.
White Gold is a joint venture between RT-Business Development wholly owned by Rostec and Gold Assets Management, a subsidiary of the Seligdar polymetallic holding. The cost of the license at the end of the auction amounted to 7.735 billion rubles.
The Kyuchus goldfield is one of the largest in Russia and the second largest in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It is located beyond the Arctic Circle in two regions of the republic: Ust-Yanskiy and Verkhoyanskiy. The area of the plot is 8.35 sq. km. Gold reserves for open-pit mining attributed to the C1 category under the Russian classification system are 70.919 tonnes, C2 - 38.416 tonnes; gold reserves for underground mining attributed to the C2 category reach 65.927 tonnes, C2 unbooked reserves - 2,647 tons, Р1-category resources - 41,949 tons, Р2 - 211,081 tons. C2 silver reserves for open-pit mining - 16.6 tons, C2 reserves for underground mining - 9.9 tons, C2 unbooked reserves - 0.4 tons.
In the area of the deposit, there is no energy infrastructure, which is necessary for the implementation of such large mining projects, so the company acting within the framework of the auction committed itself to start using at least 35 MW of nuclear electricity no later than June 2028, which should be supplied by a low-power nuclear plant in the republic. The second prerequisite that was included in the auction is that the level of production must be at least 10 tons of gold per year from the date of reaching the design capacity.
“The Kyuchus deposit is a rather complex technical object, but very significant for Yakutia. I am confident that with our partners we will be able to find a technical solution, build the enterprise that will become one of Yakutia’s brands,” said Konstantin Beirit, President and Member of the Board of Directors of Seligdar.
Vladimir Malakhov, Rough&Polished
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